A Dark Halo – Omnibus One
A Dark Halo – Omnibus One
Self-Released
Release Date: 14/07/23
Running Time: 35:10
Review by Dark Juan
9/10
Hello, Dark Juan here. I greet you all with peace and love in my heart and a cheery wave and smile and a highly inappropriate hug. May you be blessed with serenity and joy forevermore and may your flesh be bountiful and your children well-fed and delightful…
Who the fuck am I kidding? I am Dark Juan and I generally preside over orgiastic functions where the wall-eyed, vain, and insane get together and press the flesh to a degree that could only be described as… intimately. I want blood, I want leather and latex and bullwhips and people having their spines surgically opened up by clones of the glorious Charlotte Sartre, dexterously wielding their scalpels and clamps and peeling back layer after layer of muscle and flesh, her gore-slathered hands crimson up to the wrists, yet with her delicacy of touch turning impromptu and perverse surgery into something that transcends mere art. Forms sutured together face to face, or face to other orifice cavort and undulate in a seething, sweated mass of flesh. I want to see a floor swimming in blood and viscera being used by a seething mass of slippery, crimson-coated, sexually charged flesh, leaking from open wounds, and adding to the sea of red they are screwing in, watched by people hung from above by hooks pushed through their willing flesh, dripping their scarlet lifeblood upon the conjoined, copulating throng. I wish to view all this from upon my bone throne (fnaar, fnaar), dressed in my finest vestments, sipping claret, eating exquisitely crafted delicacies, and urging the assembled to even greater heights of debauchery and perversion, entirely for my own amusement. If they don’t do as I wish, they are punished. Normally between the eyes with a 9mm Parabellum round and their meat sold to… discerning connoisseurs. No questions asked…
Sorry, I am quite tired and the past three days have been busy. Yet again, the beast inside has been let out because I can’t be arsed making the mental effort to keep it in its little leather and buckle lined box. Still, it makes a change from waffling about my dog or what Mrs Dark Juan is doing, doesn’t it?
She’s now making bats with needlepoint wings; in case you are interested. The first one has proved a hit with 7 or 8 people wishing to purchase it. Dark Juan is hoping for an art-related bloodbath between Gothic art collectors of a certain age. That would cover a number of unpleasant kinks rather luxuriously.
Let us repair speedily to the wildly oscillating Platter of Splatter™ and save ourselves from what REALLY goes on inside Dark Juan’s head and instead have a butchers at A Dark Halo’s latest offering at the altar of Dark Juan’s critical… criticism. What a strange mistress the English language is. That sentence makes complete sense even though it shouldn’t.
Yes, A Dark Halo. Already they win a bonus point for having a groovy band name that would lend itself admirably to some fine merch offerings. They are from the UK’s lost colonies of America, and they play metal that owes as much to Fear Factory as it does to Dream Theater. Slightly Gothic, Nu-Metal, Prog and Industrial tinged Cyber Metal, anyone?
It has got Dark Juan revved up to fuck and no mistake. Brum brum, etc. Especially because this band has not come to my attention before, despite existing since 2004. How they have passed me by before is beyond me, and probably has more to do with my living in the provinces and pinballing around Europe than ignorance on the part of Dark Juan.
Still, Dark Juan is always up for discovering new music via the magic of the internet and promo companies, so here we are! ‘Thin Be The Veil’ doesn’t bother with compromise, starting instantly with some shiny, serrated riffing and some swirling electronics and some fucking chunky, MEATY vocals from male lead singer and bassmonster Dave Lowmiller (once again proving my theory that every band in the world has had a Dave in it at some point) contrasting gloriously with the clean, alto tones of female vocalist and guitar basher Melrose. Chief string-slinger Abe Robertson is a fucking tasty soloist as well, laying down some face-peeling wailing on his axe on this opening cut that owes a lot to the polished Cyber Metal of Fear Factory and Spineshank. The next song is ‘Starfall’, featuring Kathleen Cylkowski and this too offers the overgrown teenager listening to it a smorgasbord of harsh, Industrial roaring on the verses, transposed with swooping Electronic undercurrents and an anthemic chorus that has sent goosebumps straight up Dark Juan’s spine.
‘Vector Unknown’ has Synthwave-esque popping and squelching underlying some spectacularly weighty guitar work and the full-throated vomitoria of Dave’s vocals again work in concert with the sweeter, more human tones of Melrose’s clean, waspish voice. The middle eight is just Cyber Metal perfection, the robotic nature of the music contrasting with a guitar solo that references the organic fighting against the mechanical… Once more there is an anthemic, coruscating chorus that lifts A Dark Halo above the run of the mill Fear Factory copyists.
Also, spoiler alert – ‘The Disquiet’ has a break in it that will send you to the fucking chiropractor in short order. You heard it here first. Do not attempt it if you are over the age of 40, whether or not you think you are Slamdalf. You’re not.
It’s fair to say that Dark Juan is having a fucking good time right now with A Dark Halo – the music is rooted in the early 2000s but there’s a highly honed, diamond-sharp edge to the music from this bunch of ungrateful colonials that drags it right into the here and now and makes it sound relevant as fuck. A Dark Halo have many dimensions to them, and they also have the talent and frankly, the mahoosive cojones, to show just how one dimensional a lot of the Metal out there can be. A Dark Halo are masters (and mistress) of dark and light, heavier than your mum, gran and the rest of your female relatives in weapons-grade plutonium underwear and smooshed into a fat bastard sandwich, but also capable of soaring majestically above their musical landscape, which really should anchor the band firmly to the ground but doesn’t, and it is this fluidity, this refusal to be conformist, this sheer furious energy that gives them that crucial edge that turns a merely good band into a great one.
If you can meld the Progressive to the Cybernetic in the way A Dark Halo have on “Omnibus One” then you have won a Dark Juan. The explosive Electronics, the metronomic drumming, the face-tearing guitars, the earth-shaking bass and Dave and Melrose’s vocals all combine to set off imagery in Dark Juan’s head of super-oxygenated blood being carried through clear plastic tubing to artificially boosted muscles and bone pistons on a battlewagon that has a human brain and a metric fuckton of heavy grade ceramic armour, blasting alien invaders into clouds of unimportant atoms with horrific bioweapons created entirely from flesh and bone grafted on to a heavy-duty combat chassis and fed by enlarged and modified human heart and lungs. From a grille in the front of this biomechanical war machine issues an inchoate and unintelligible roaring and howling from what’s left of a human throat screaming bloody, endless vengeance against fucking everything left living on this planet.
Yeah, I think I might need a beer, too.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System has very much enjoyed this beguiling melding of Prog, Nu-Metal and Cyber and is delighted to award A Dark Halo 9/10 for a bloody good album that should appeal to the more Industrial of Metal fans, but has enough to be enjoyed by more intrepid Metal aficionados.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Thin Be The Veil
02. Starfall
03. Vector Unknown
04. Flame Betide
05. I, Revenant
06. It Never Sleeps
07. Afterworld
08. The Disquiet
LINE-UP:
Dave Lowmiller – Lead vocals, bass guitar
Melrose (MECHINA) – Lead vocals, guitar
Christopher M. Jones – Guitars, back-up vocals
Abe Robertson – Lead Guitar, back-up vocals
Kaye Papale – Drums
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
