A Night In Texas – The Darkest Side Of Humanity
A Night In Texas – The Darkest Side Of Humanity
Unique Leader Records
Release date: 04/09/26
Review by Oli Gonzalez
8/10
The nation of Australia has produced countless quality metal bands over the years. Bands leaning towards the modern metalcore and deathcore ends of the spectrum. Make Them Suffer, Thy Art Is Murder, and of course Parkway Drive. To name just a few! Now enter A Night In Texas, a new band to me but an established heavyweight nonetheless.
From the opening seconds of ‘Oblivions Dominion’, it’s clear that they’re not content with remaining in the shadows of their countrymen! This is a forceful statement, and comes for the jugular with a nasty jagged razor! Yes, this is a bruising encounter, with crushing, distorted downtuned guitars dominating the mix and allowing no light to exit from their murky depths in the early stages! Statement made. Though in the latter stages, more symphonic elements enter your stream of consciousness. In the same way Lorna Shore and Greek death metal legends Septic Flesh have done for decades! It adds an additional point of focus and expands the band’s sound in an impressive compositional move.
Add these elements, and the blistering, sharp, machine-gun-like drumming in ‘Fed To Death,’ and you get something that’s certainly not for the faint of heart! Just like the breakdowns towards the end! ‘Myastatic Misery’ showcases perhaps the most symphonic depth on the album to date, with tactical pauses in the music making them more salient and adding a rare melodic focal point in the early stages, as do the soaring and blistering lead guitars, with an almost Middle Eastern spice adding a sense of drama and urgency to the music! Though the distortion pedals are swapped out for shoegazey tones in ‘When The Sun Burns Out’, the gutturals and growls are subbed for cleaner melodic vocals. Well, at least in the outset. Order is resumed with Cameron asserting his dominance on the mic with his signature growls. Though the melodic foundations return in the latter stages, and what a welcome return it is! Perhaps the song of the album!
As nasty and filthy the album has been up until this point, we need a breather. Not just to prevent cognitive overload and synaptic shutdown, but just to prove that A Night In Texas isn’t a one-trick pony. Just one more song like this would have taken this album from a good to an excellent, I feel. Because it can feel like ideas are being recycled a bit too much, and songs become less and less salient as the album progresses. Though there are still plenty of hooks on the album, with more guitar lead anthems towards the latter stages. As well as a muscular finish in the shape of the album’s title track!
This is going to more than satisfy Lorna Shore fans who are still trying to fill the hole that’s been there since “I Feel The Everblack Fester Within Me” was released almost 1 year ago. We’ve seen quality records from the likes of Paleface Swiss, Worm Shephard, and Ov Sulfur in the deathcore world in 2026. Now we can add “The Darker Side Of Humanity” by A Night In Texas to that list!
TRACKLISTING:
01. Oblivions Dominion
02. Rot From Within
03. Fed To Death
04. Metastic Misery
05. Evolved From Hate
06. When The Sun Burns Out
07. A Primal Conditioning
08. The Chronicles of Nihilism
09. The Infinite Maw
10. The Darkest Side Of Humanity
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