Darkest Hour’s new album dim

At some point during the last decade, screaming and/or growling the lyrics to every song became a requirement for any band wishing to label itself as “heavy.”

Victory Record’s Darkest Hour is clearly from this school of thought. Such a choice would be forgivable if the band rewarded listeners with compelling lyrics or music. Unfortunately, the 11 tracks on “Undoing Ruin” offer no such luxuries.

Occasionally, their lyrics creep above the average quality for a metal band, but most of the songs retread the predictable themes-melodrama, self-hatred, etc. Darkest Hour does serve up more occasional optimism than many similar groups would, but it’s often packaged in phrases too hokey to take seriously.

A prime example comes in the first song, “With a Thousand Words to Say But One,” where vocalist John Henry sings, “So let’s go out west and bask in the overcast/ and walking through the rain, we’ll see the beauty in life again.” A mere line or two of this nonsense would only be distracting, but they pop up so often in “Undoing Ruin” that they come off sounding like Christian rockers. And believe me, “Winger-ian” or “Pillar-esque” are the last adjectives these guys should try for.

Henry also has a knack for vague wording, which often leads to unimpressive images or unintended results. On “These Fevered Times,” he promises, “When it hits like a ton of bricks to the chest/ out of breath on the bathroom floor/ and I’ll make it to the light of this night.” Meanwhile, we are left to wonder if he’s describing more of the same old emotional confusion or a bad hangover.

In all fairness, when’s the last time anyone bought a metal CD for the lyrics? Surely the only things that mattered to the hoards who saw them at Ozzfest this year were guitar work from Kris Norris and Mike Schleibaum and the band’s sheer loudness. While it’s true that Norris and Schleibaum are impressive players, an album cannot survive on solos alone.

It’s bad enough that the songs on “Undoing Ruin” sound like every other hard rock group out there, but nearly every song on the album sounds just about the same as the one just before or after it.

Regardless, the songs are short enough to avoid becoming truly grating, with the exception of the last track, which drones on without purpose. Of all the songs here, “District Divided” stands as the strongest representation of what Darkest Hour is capable of when they leave out the “sing-along” sounding choruses and misplaced guitar solos.

One mark of a great band is being able to lure people who aren’t normally fans of your genre into embracing your music. While Darkest Hour has some serious work to do before they reach that point, “Undoing Ruin” will at least please their target audience: metalheads.