Review Summary: Painfully untimely effort
Imagine screamed verses/clean choruses band that lacks Dance Gavin Dance's deftness or The Amity Affliction's catchiness or boldness of The Devil Wears Prada. So this is Space Of Variations in a nutshell, but with some extra experimentations and electronics, but always one step behind and one hit song short to make a breakthrough.
Talking about hit songs there is actually one. It's called Tibet and it's both the best and the worst thing about this album. Best because it's literally the best song on the album, it's catchy as hell and even brutal at times. And worst because there is no song as good as Tibet on Mind Darknet by a mile. So it was a smart move to put it first on the tracklist, but in a long run it's pretty much diminishing the rest of the album. Heavy use of oriental samples sets the tone of the record, and this mix of breakdowns and monks' gospels works really well. And it sounds good too, Mind Darknet is a gorgeous sounding album there is no way around it. Drums and bass are spliced together perfectly and are deliberately designed to have you jumping. Most of the time guitar work is pretty simple, but here and there you can hear couple of interesting riffs, either it's an odd breakdown or a nice melody. Both vocalists shine throughout the record, but some variety wouldn't hurt. Everything is right until you remember it's 2018.
And this is the main concern I have with Mind Darknet. It is not relevant anymore. We've seen all these bands rise, prevail and fall to ashes one after another. Blessthefall, Crown The Empire, Escape The Fate, The Word Alive and even Asking Alexandria, they all have been relevant for a while, they did their thing, and they excelled in it. It's change or die for all of them, and some of them did change. Of course, their sudden and huge popularity gave birth to thousands bands like this that all just sound the same. Unclean and clean vocalists could have been a huge thing for the genre ten years ago, but now it's just a painful cliche, and when there is no interesting interchange between them and it's very schematic, I ask the very necessity of it. Using club electronics in metal songs could have been awesome in the world without Enter Shikari or Attack! Attack! same goes for the same-ish clean choruses. Some songs could win a lot if they wasn't this formulaic: Sometimes is a very radio-friendly banger with a sudden outburst of southern hardcore, Moonlight has this undeniable rhythm and spitfire vocals that should have been used more frequently on the album, Suicide Rave sounds like nu metal revival song that is more relevant today than ever.
Maybe it's me being picky, but I can't help myself from thinking that ten years ago this album would be the biggest hit, or maybe even ten years from now when eventually it's all coming back. Music is good, lyrics apart from being nonsensical are very corrosive, and the whole album is coherent. But I just wished they would apply their talent to something more ambitious and original.
