The Darkest Room marks the debut release by the Heavy Metal/Power Metal act Manimal, and for the most part it is a powerful release. There are plenty of songs on here that are hard hitting tracks that one would expect from a Power Metal group with vocals that carry a nice range. While this album doesn't really offer anything all that spectacular, it's still a solid effort with minimal filler in the nine tracks that make up this effort.
Much of the album is very well done, even though it starts off a bit rocky with "Shadows". The music is great, coming at you with a chugging manner that you would hear on many heavier Progressive acts, then goes into a more generic Power Metal feel after this section, leaving you wishing a little more out of the vocalist at least as it starts off hard hitting, and then goes into a still kind of heavy slower pace with simplistic chords and minimal drumming with a tight chorus that almost makes up for that built up disappointment. Right off the bat, the listener will hear a huge Brainstorm influence in the band's music. After "Shadows", the album does seem to pick up a little more and follow what listeners would typically expect from a band in a musical common sense kind of manner, leading to plenty of great songs like the very melodic and infectious "I Am" which also has an impressive guitar solo half way through that works very well with the song and actually comes off as something you might find traces of in an old 80's Hard Rock ballad.
The only problem with the album is that around the time of the track "Spinegrinder", it starts to get a little weak as it starts to show repetition in the musical structures and even the vocal performance. This is sad because "Spinegrinder" is actually not that bad a song and probably could have been salvaged somehow. "Dreamers and Fools" and "The Life We Lived" are entertaining songs as well, but musically are very diverse compared to the rest of the album, shifting away dramatically towards a more generic Power Metal sound and away from the things that made this release stand out somewhere. The good news about this shift, however, is that much of the repetition that has been building up to this point is gone at least. On top of all of that, you also get one hell of a guitar solo during "Dreamers and Fools", which is the fastest track off the album. The closing track, "The Life We Lived", is also dramatically different, almost like this and "Dreamers and Fools" are cover tracks, but features a very nice vocal performance with moments that come off as if you're listening to a Hard Rock ballad with higher pitched singing vocals incorporated.
So, yes, The Darkest Room doesn't really bring anything too new to the table, but it still has plenty of solid tracks, with only one that really comes off as a filler track before the band seems to even get tired of their own sound and dramatically change their sound at the end of the album. Manimal definitely have what it takes to compose an excellent album, so hopefully any future endeavors will find the band bringing more of their own original sound over everything else. But, for now, they bring us an album composed of powerful singing and solid music that will find a way to lodge deep inside your cranium for a good while, but thanks to the repetition, after a few spins you'll start to shy away from the album and some of it's generic and stereotypical elements.
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