Darkane - Rusted Angel

[Rodrigo]

DARKANE – RUSTED ANGEL
Regain Records/The End Records - 2003

By Rodrigo Escandon

Yet another excellent reissue thanks to the fine folks at Regain Records and this time its Darkane’s awesome debut Rusted Angel, originally released in 1998. Combining elements of Swedish death metal, Bay Area thrash and a dose of technicality, Rusted Angel still is one excellent slab of extreme metal and one that sounds as fresh now as the day it was released.

The guitar duo of Klas Ideberg and Christofer Malmström break out with excellent melodic, aggressive and intense playing. Solo’s fly out of every direction but their greatest asset is their off-time riffing and thus providing the lead to the unbelievable backbone of the band, the amazing drumming by Peter Wildoer who must be considered as one of metal’s best drummers. He has the technicality and sheer ability to easily shift from the intense rhythmic parts to the constant breaks with no problems whatsoever. His pounding bass drumming and crystal clear cymbal play are on utter display and he really is the star in this album. It’s a shame that he has reined in the style a bit with the last album Expanding Senses (a great album in its own regard). Not to be outdone has to be bassist Jörgen Löfberg because he has to keep up with the chaos and does a phenomenal job.

In Rusted Angel the singing was handled by the excellent Lawrence Mackrory who has no problems from switching from death metal grunts, to black metal screaming, to angry thrash vocals and finally to some occasional “clean” vocals. Lawrence can handle it all and its no joke when I say that he will feature all those styles in one song. Rusted Angel would be the only Darkane album that he appeared on and that is also a shame, although he makes a guest vocal appearance on the song “Chaos vs. Order” in Expanding Senses.

Rusted Angel was produced by Daniel Bergstrand and that has given the album a more raw feeling that is more adequate to this music than say the more polished sound that comes out of Studio Fredman. This reissue also includes the original Japanese bonus track which is a short instrumental titled “Relief in Disguise” as well as two live tracks that were recorded in 1998 and featured in this release, “A Wisdoms Breed” and my favorite Darkane song “Convicted”.

Now that this reissue will be widely available there is no excuse for not owning this essential album and one that will make any collection incomplete if it does not include this gem.


Regain Records Website
The End Records Website
Official Darkane Website

 

[trippel]

ya ok it is a decent album but it is not an album i,ll play more than a dozen times or so the songs do not urge u to play them over and this album is an unmemorable release which deserves to fade out and maybe be picked up in the used cd bin

 

[Chasm]

Unmemorable? What the fuck? I bought this album shortly after it was originally released and up until this day, every time I put it on, the songs are stuck in my head for days. You should go listen to this album again dude. As Rodrigo said, this is Essential!

 

[Yeah]

I wouldn't even consider acknowledging the opinion of some fucktard who couldn't even punctuate a post and make it recognizable as modern english, but hey, that's just me.

I would actually beg to differ, I think switching from Lawrence to Andreas was a better idea, as Mackory tends to get on your fucking nerves easily with the "demon midget" sound of songs like the title track. They both pretty much have the same clean style (including that affinity to linger on "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"...they must show a lot of Sesame Street in Sweden), I just find Andreas' growling, in any style, far more tolerable. In fact, tolerable is selling it a bit short.

As far as musicianship goes, Rusted Angel is a great album for lead guitar, but in terms of technicality, I think Insanity is the farm more ambitious venture from Darkane.