Dark New Day - twelve YEARsilence

From the grainy cover shot of two tiny children dwarfed by a piano, to the ultra serious, angled band photo on the back, to the titles and the name of the band itself, everything about twelveYEARsilence, the debut album from Dark New Day (or DARKnewDAY as it’s written on the album sleeve), screams of a band trying too hard to emulate their idols. The fact that this then is the new venture from former Sevendust guitarist Clint Lowery and former Creed bassist Brett Hestla (now on vocals) – two bands who made their career by making safe the trails bands had blazed five years before them, doesn’t come as a big surprise.

Sounding amazingly like an amalgamation of those two bands, then if they were five years late to the party, Dark New Day are around ten years behind. The biggest problem with this album is the sense that you have heard it all before. Slow intros driven by drumming on the toms and “atmospheric” guitar or bass lines, which lead into overblown choruses and emotional verses. I’m sure the band believes in what they’re creating, but I just find it hard to get excited about it all these years later.

The album starts with the triple combination of Taking Me Alive, Brother and Free, which judging from the sticker on the front are expected to be the hit singles of the album. All are fairly inoffensive, at the expense of any form of excitement. The exception is the guitar solo that pops up during Taking Me Alive, which is perhaps a bit out of place, but at least provides a bit of surprise to the listener. The rest of the album follows the same course; their skill is clearly on display, and often there are some catchy moments, but with such perfection and smooth production it all feels so flat. This is most obvious in the song Bare Bones. “Time to get it back / Back to bare bones” Hestla sings over a wall of guitars, harmonies, echoes and chorus, with no apparent sense of irony.

Remember when Korn’s self titled debut came out in 1994? Or even back when Alice In Chains released Dirt in 1992? Whatever trajectories the later careers of those bands would take, at the time of release no one could deny those albums were something new, something fresh and exciting, pushing music to places it hadn’t been before. In a world full of Evanesences, Nicklebacks, Godsmacks and various other bands trading on familiar sounds, Dark New Day will easily find their place amongst the Triple M playlists. That is if people aren’t already too tired of this sound to give them a chance.

(Originally published on FasterLouder)