Quickly climbing the ladder as one of the day’s top dark metal labels, Finland’s Firebox has been dishing out quality releases for the past few years. A good percentage of today’s depressive material is from this particular label and honestly along with Candlelight, they seem to be the two top contestants at the moment. So, for a band to get picked up by them is pretty significant because I haven’t heard anything bad yet. Although, Dark the Suns isn’t quite as good as the rest of their label mates, they are expressing some promise for the future.

I heard Dark The Suns on a sample disc early in the summer. My quest to find out more about them lead me nowhere as they had no website and no myspace page. Becoming quite frustrated with the situation I kept my eyes peeled for any information. Soon enough a myspace page came and samples of their debut were surfacing. This is a fresh act that has some really beautiful piano, accompanying upbeat, chord driven doom similar to Rapture, Slumber, and Before the Dawn.

Promise is shown, but compared to others, Dark the Suns lacks innovation. Most of the songs have the same drive, rarely change pace, and not much but chords are played. The only diverse melody happening here are the piano passages. Still, as little as they give the music is well written and well produced. The catchiest thing is the piano and it really is what makes this band seem promising to me. Vocally, we have whispers and death rasps that are very close to Insomnium. The entire feel of In Darkness Comes Beauty is very depressing even though it’s sort of upbeat. This is where the Rapture reference comes in to play. There are a few breaks now and then where single guitars will give a Katatonia feel but this last for only a second until the song kicks back into gear. Dark The Suns could definitely use some diversity.

This is a hard one to review just because of Firebox nailing the rest of their roll call. Dark The Suns is an enjoyable listen for fans of dark metal ala Rapture, but don’t expect the brilliance quite yet. Lets hope a spark gets lit and some more radical ideas can be introduced to make this another fine example of what Finland can offer.

[Visit the band's website]

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