Zero Hour – Dark Deceiver (04/2008)

It has been a while since my last review… I m deeply sorry, let me illustrate my current situation with a quote from G-Man from the Half-Life 2 game: “Rise and shine, Mr. Freeman. Rise and shine. Not that I wish to imply you have been sleeping on the job. No-one is more deserving of a rest. And all the effort in the world would have gone to waste until… well, let’s just say your hour has come again.” In short: I had quite a lot of work in terms of my studies and I didn’t find the necessary time to write something… but now I’m back!

So… lets talk a bit about Zero Hour shall we? Anyone of you know this awesome prog-metal band from the U.S.? I sure as hell didn’t know them a few days ago… although they already released 5 full length albums! Their latest CD Dark Deceiver, sequel to the CD Specs of Pictures Burnt Beyond, is a real blast!

Honestly it took me a few tries until I was warmed up for this artistic mammoth. I felt back like the first time I heard Dillinger Escape Plan: Clueless, puzzled and confused. It isn’t totally as wild and mathematical as Dillinger because they implement clean vocals with a lot of soft riffs. The songs are very complex and unique: a wide variety of rhythms clash together in a well structured basis of riffs and vocals. Although sometimes you feel like your utterly lost in chaos, the songs are built to have a more stable part. So listening to the songs is like driving a car on steroids, at red lights you must stop and have a break out and when the light turns green you run like a maniac.

Memorable things on this work of art “à la extraordinaire” are the hyper-prog duets and solos: Everything fits like a glove. The drum parts match the guitar parts to 100%, I haven’t heard such a beautiful layout of riffs and rhythms in years. But the one true masterpiece of this musical labyrinth remain the bass parts. I’ve heard that there were great bass players out there, but I seldom really “heard” those players:

1) the mix on the CD is simply amazing

2) Troy Tipton is a bass god.

Simply listen to the track tendonitis… it’s a whole 120 seconds of pure bass solo bliss.

Last but not least let me compliment Troy’s brother Jasun for those really great keyboard and guitar solos. They’re awesome.

So all in all it’s a great mix, excellent musical performance without flaws, nice overall sounds; a heavy prog oriented album. If you like Dillinger Escape Plan, Spiral Architect and you are a fan of Ayreon this album is a must. The only flaw I have found was that the album was hard to get comfortable with, its not everybody’s music and some parts are really strange.

Blood and honor Zero Hour!

8/10

Benno

~ by rahjas on May 9, 2008.