Dark Suns - Grave Human Genuine
Prophecy Productions - 2008
By Laurence Bird
Grave Human Genuine is the third full-length release by Germany’s
Dark Suns. The music is a blend of doom, dark and progressive metal, and in places seems more like a crash between the three. Everything sits well in the mix thanks to decent production, the only problem being that some moments don’t have enough bass. This makes the guitars seem tinny, and the sound sterile. There is a definite prog feel to proceedings, with a lot of experimentation, good examples being ambient passages and the use of a flute, among many other things.
My biggest criticism is that a lot of this does not work; the different styles seem forced, clashing together and seldom fitting. The sudden change from slow and ambient to break-neck blast beats and back in 6 seconds becomes annoying. As such the album suffers from poor song structure, and it seems that any idea which occurred in the studio was just thrown in for good measure with little thought given to cohesion. Nevertheless, the album is solid, and highlights include
’Thornchild’ and
’Free Of You’ which are more doomy than prog, the vocals are excellent, especially in the latter with their haunted feel and pent up emotion.
Grave Human Genuine is definitely worth a look but with a little more care could have been so much more.
