Dark Sermon
In Tongues

Judging by the press text, this has to be the most unique and intriguing debut album ever made. It takes the best and forgets the rest when it comes to borrowing stuff from other bands and from musical genres. They redefine metal and all of that with their influences according to the press text which is suspect was transcribed from someone speaking in tongues. Their music slices and dices its way through the most exciting elements of metal’s subgenres with relentless aggression, that sounds all good and thrilling but wait, there’s more good stuff said in the press release. Like: They want to influence the next generation of metal bands the way their favourite bands influenced them, with two powerful weapons: Uniqueness and innovation. And with a debut album like this one, Dark Sermon is well on their way down that path. So what about this floridian band then? often when uniqueness and innovation is mentioned in the press texts there is nothing of it to be heard anywhere in the music.

That can also be said about these guys, their music is a mixture of elements easily found in abundance in the metal genre and the overall result is not really that unique. Not unique or innovative at all if I am completely honest (which I always am). “Dark Sermon arrives in the worldwide metal community determined to stand apart from the cookie-cutter garbage and trend-following cretins who have overcrowded the scene. They don’t care about what’s marketable or what sells. Dark Sermon has nothing less than total domination on their minds, armed with a new kind of heavy.” Really? Where is that on this album? it sounds just like all those cretins they apparently set themselves above. So delusions of grandeur they do have, and a poor singer. The production is excellent and the result is at first glance something that sounds like everything else and at second glance something that sounds like a mixture of everything else.

And it is not like they take it and mix it to form something fresh and potent, they mix that cookie-cutter trend-following stuff into something trend-following and dull. I don’t like this album one bit, it is being oversold by a press release writer who clearly has no idea about why it is better to be a bit neutral in a press release and it does not deliver even a percent of what the press release suggests it should release. I am bored when I listen, unimpressed and certain that I have heard all of it before. They say no song is the same as another on the album and while that is true the songs sound very similar and when listening they sort of float together into one massive song that doesn’t quite go anywhere.

After ten times playing this album I still remain unimpressed, it seems as though they have no ideas of their own. Dark Sermon, inspired by Black Sabbath perhaps? I guess I will leave the sermons for them, maybe hold a little one as I flush this down the toilet for the mutants who lives down there in the sewers to use as a coaster. So, next up, the toilet!

HHHHHHH