MY DARKEST SIDE – “Death Begins”
July 10th, 2010
MY DARKEST SIDE – Death Begins
Promo, M. A. Production
January 2010
Deathcore
5,5/10
My Darkest Side are a five – piece hailing from Rome, formed in Summer 2008 by drummer Demian and guitarist Umberto with the purpose of creating a band to mix Deathcore together with Groove Metal influences. After everal line-up changes, the duo eventually recruited two suitable mebers to keep the project going, in the persons of lead guitarist Dario and vocalist Valerio; the band was finally joined by bass player Alessandro in June 2009, and therefore entered the studio in December 2009 to start the recording sessions for their first release, which is this promo cd entitled Death Begins and consisting in four tracks (My Sixth Sense, Spawning Blood, Altar of Star’s Light and Terror of Reality).
The music presented on this promo is a well produced and performed, but ultimately rather stagnant, brand of violent and ripping groove/deathcore, not too far removed from the likes of Lamb of God – whom they unsurprisingly cite as an influence, alongside The Black Dahlia Murder, although some hints at such bands as Caliban and Unearth leer through in both riffing and song structures. In fact, the biggest flaw of this promo is the consistent imitativeness of the music, which fails to make much of an impression due to the unoriginal songwriting and the lack of personality of the songs which are largely interchangeable with each other. The production is very clean and powerful and the execution of the songs sounds impeccable from an instrumental point of view, but the overall result sounds very unidimensional and extremely derivative, so, despite the undeniable technical merits of this effort and the very professional presentation of the band, I have to say I haven’t been emoted or invigorated by their effort in any significant way. Probably this is also partly due to the fact that the genre at hand is not properly my cup of tea, so maybe foaming-at-the-mouth fans of the listed bands (only) might as well want to give My Darkest Side an opportunity, but I for one believe that this band would have turned out way more interesting and worth checking with a more individual sound to make them more than just an average, by-the-numbers example of this genre.