DAMNATIONS DAY — Invisible, the Dead (review)

DAMNATIONS DAY — Invisible, the Dead album cover

Album · 2013 · Power Metal

4/5 · 2013-10-15
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Invisible, the Dead (2013) is the debut full-length studio album by Australian metal act Damnations Day. The album was produced by Teramaze guitarist Dean Wells who also contributed lead guitar to the album. The two bands also share a drummer in Dean Kennedy.

The music on Invisible, the Dead is a mixed bag of styles. The most common element is power metal but there is also a good amount of times when the riffs go full on thrash metal, although I struggle to really identify this as true power-thrash. To a lesser extent Damnations Day include elements of melodic heavy metal while the song Carried Above the Sun features some symphonic parts. While there are also progressive touches to be heard on and off throughout, they are nowhere near common enough for Invisible, The Dead to be considered as a progressive metal album. The band favours shorter three to four minute tracks and while they do genre hop as per the above, as well as have a tendency to throw in sudden acoustic passages, the album is otherwise quite straightforward riff-driven music.

The album kicks things off with its title track and I have to say it sets the wrong impression for me. Not only does the song not particularly represent the sound that the bulk of Invisible, the Dead is about to go on to deliver, but the melodic heavy metal sound that the song has only really served to tell me that this is an area that Damnations Day do not have any apparent strengths in. It actually bored until some way it when they band finally kicked things up a gear, however briefly, into the more power/thrash direction that was to come, which was instantly a lot more energetic. Second track The Meaning improved things dramatically, but the release did not start to grab me properly until third song I Am. From this point it didn't let go again, but it was very much a shaky start.

Well, I say it didn't let go and that is true, but it still took until the song Lucid Dreaming for me to find something that I could really consider a highlight, and then I found a pair of them with following song Reflections also earning this status. Damnations Day are at their best when playing power or thrash metal based songs and the majority of songs from I Am onwards fit one or the other of these styles, although there are also two ballads in the forms of A Ghost in Me and the closing A World to Come. I'm not sure that a power/thrash metal release really should have two ballads of all things since both are meant to be speed based genres but the tracks are done well enough so as to not disrupt the flow of the album once it eventually got going.

The musicianship is good but what struck me the most about the album was a quite varied vocal approach from band leader Mark Kennedy. At times soft and melodic, the kind of vocals suitable to melodic prog or power metal bands, at others more high register and powerful, reminding me of artists like Rob Halford and really hitting the spot for the faster paced power and thrash sections of the album.

As an debut album Invisible, the Dead is generally solid work from Damnations Day but there are a few teething problems in evidence. If these guys stuck to the fast paced power/thrash metal styles then I expect they'd turn out something a lot more relentless sounding than Invisible, The Dead ended up as. I enjoyed it in the end, but they did not make it an easy ride.

77/100

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven: http://metaltube.freeforums.org/damnations-day-invisible-the-dead-t3210.html)