Darkane - Layers of Lies

Man oh man, what the hell happened to Darkane? People (just about every metal head I know, myself included) used to worship this band, especially the heralded debut "Rusted Angel". We all tolerated "Insanity", change in vocalist and all and at least for myself, enjoyed the slightly slower groove of "Expanding Senses". But jeez guys, what the hell is this turd all about??? From the disjointed inner sleeve artwork that resemble pictures taken by high school photography students (that by the way, seem to have no connection to the cover artwork) to the muddy sound (probably part production and part guitar tuning conspiring to make this into audible mud), this record has got to be THE biggest disappointment this year, second only to Arch Enemies "Doomsday Machine". Boy, these songs are such a disjointed mess, sounding more like a collection of throw away riffs from the last record than anything else. Poor vocalist Andreas Sydow, who has the unenviable job of having to come up with vocal melodies for these "songs" and in the end wind up sounding like two bands got their vocal track and their guitar and drums tracks switched. Nothing syncs up here. I could really use the $17 (yes I bought the damn thing, not on sale either,thank you very much) I spent on this. I could really use the 45 minutes I lost to boot. You could say this whole record is a bunch of layers of lies. Avoid like a Tabasco and soy milkshake.