Damnations Day
Invisible, the Dead
Nightmare Records
2013
Hailing from Australia, this newcomer heavy/power prog metal quartet proves, once more, that when it comes to metal music we shouldn’t leave Australia out of the game. We have presented several Australian bands on Grande Rock, the last couple of years, and we pointed out that this thing will continue and it will grow bigger from time to time. Damnations Day is the proof to that! I’m very glad I get to know bands, at times, which won’t possibly have any big welcome or presentation by the twisted & nasty “music system” that promotes and recycles the same things all the time. Bands like Damnations Day will keep delivering great music though… music that those well-advertised bands won’t ever get to deliver…
The band’s debut release was written by their “mastermind” Mark Kennedy (vocals, guitar) and produced/mixed by the guitarist/producer Dean Wells (Teramaze) who also contributed to the guitar leads. Even though it’s hard to define the band’s sound, I think it’s better to describe it as an amalgam among Evegrey, Fates Warning (first era), Symphony X, Darkology, Redemption, Darkwater, Vanden Plas, Andromeda, Circus Maximus, Cloudscape and so forth. Add a bit of more heaviness & various heavy-thrash elements to all those and you’re halfway there. I mean, all those descriptions certainly fail in the end as every band has its own identity and style… and I’m not referring to the clones or the copycats here. Another point of interest is the strong melodies and the way the band combines heaviness and melody in due course.
“Invisible, the Dead” is a very well-balanced album. It doesn’t become monotonous at any point due to the nice melodious breaks on the tracks, the two wonderful acoustic tunes, “A Ghost in Me” & “A World to Come” and the overall short running-time of the album, which is about 38 minutes. The band members play like lunatics throughout the album. Furthermore, the heavy & tight production makes you wanna turn on the volume to the max and blow your speakers off.
Damnations Day won the impressions with their debut album & they did raise the bar for the future, thing which must not make them anxious as it can work for their own best interest. I don’t think that it will be hard or impossible to exceed this album in the future but they have to do it naturally, in terms of evolution. In short, “Invisible, the Dead” is an excellent debut album by a very talented & promising band…
The band’s debut release was written by their “mastermind” Mark Kennedy (vocals, guitar) and produced/mixed by the guitarist/producer Dean Wells (Teramaze) who also contributed to the guitar leads. Even though it’s hard to define the band’s sound, I think it’s better to describe it as an amalgam among Evegrey, Fates Warning (first era), Symphony X, Darkology, Redemption, Darkwater, Vanden Plas, Andromeda, Circus Maximus, Cloudscape and so forth. Add a bit of more heaviness & various heavy-thrash elements to all those and you’re halfway there. I mean, all those descriptions certainly fail in the end as every band has its own identity and style… and I’m not referring to the clones or the copycats here. Another point of interest is the strong melodies and the way the band combines heaviness and melody in due course.
“Invisible, the Dead” is a very well-balanced album. It doesn’t become monotonous at any point due to the nice melodious breaks on the tracks, the two wonderful acoustic tunes, “A Ghost in Me” & “A World to Come” and the overall short running-time of the album, which is about 38 minutes. The band members play like lunatics throughout the album. Furthermore, the heavy & tight production makes you wanna turn on the volume to the max and blow your speakers off.
Damnations Day won the impressions with their debut album & they did raise the bar for the future, thing which must not make them anxious as it can work for their own best interest. I don’t think that it will be hard or impossible to exceed this album in the future but they have to do it naturally, in terms of evolution. In short, “Invisible, the Dead” is an excellent debut album by a very talented & promising band…