Tragedy fans have been awaiting a new album since 2006’s Nerve Damage, and, similar to the aforementioned release, this year’s Darker Days Ahead has been greeted with mixed reviews. While many die-hard fans feel that Nerve Damage was a bit too poppy and catchy, preferring the newer album, some music critics have stated that they feel the band dumbed down their sound with this release, making it more brutish, plodding and sludgy for their crustier fans.
Tragedy fans have been awaiting a new album since 2006’s Nerve Damage, and, similar to the aforementioned release, this year’s Darker Days Ahead has been greeted with mixed reviews. While many die-hard fans feel that Nerve Damage was a bit too poppy and catchy, preferring the newer album, some music critics have stated that they feel the band dumbed down their sound with this release, making it more brutish, plodding and sludgy for their crustier fans.
While I can see both sides of the coin, it appears to me that Tragedy are trying to rectify all elements of their sound on this album by returning to the straightforward-yet-musically-diverse approach they had on their first, self-titled album (a gem that was recently inducted into Decibel magazine’s Hall of Fame). The band is still embracing their melodic and catchy side, and even taking cues from the recent black metal/shoegaze crossover fad and utilizing some dronier riffs in the vein of bands like A Place to Bury Strangers. However, there is still enough chugging, grunting, heavy riffing, and shouted chorusing to satisfy the die-hard crust and d-beat fans.
The albums starts off with the song “No Cemeteries,” which is one of the best on the album. It layers melodic metal guitar over droning parts and slow, plodding riffs. This transitions nicely into “Close at Hand,” a straight-up chugging hardcore anthem, and “The Grim Infinite,” which starts with a piano-and-wailing-wind intro very similar to the one before their classic “The Intolerable Weight,” and then goes into a very sad, slow song similar to that tune itself. This is followed by “The Feeding Hour,” another shoegaze-and-sludge influenced track, and a couple songs later, the title track, which has a resounding, Tragedy-esque chorus, turning extremely bleak, dystopian lyrics into something to get pumped about at the gym.
The problem is, I listened to the album twice and kind of lost interest both times after the title track. The rest of the album is solid, don’t get me wrong. It just all starts to blend together, almost as if they decided to stick all their more generic tunes to please the d-beaters at the end, after the songs they were really proud of. This is somewhat typical of a Tragedy album; I always feel that they are discouraged or disheartened somehow by their own music at the end of a recording, but it was disappointing nonetheless. It’s almost as if they are apologizing for the first half of the album, which causes the whole thing to lose credibility.
All in all, though, this album is solid. While some tracks certainly do stand out more then others, and the album definitely loses momentum towards the end, there are enough stand-alone songs and strong moments to make this worth adding to your hardcore collection. It’s just experimental and traditional enough to please all audiences, the only problem is, it fails to wow in either direction.
