Closer - Darkness In Me

Published Feb. 06 2007

*=Staff's pick	Shelter From It Darkness In Me Nothing Is Everything

Genre	Thrash Metal	Andreas Mellberg	Vocals
Tracks	3	Jonas Skoog	Guitar
Runningtime	11 Min.	Per Bergkvist	Guitar
Label	Pulverised Records	Björn Ahlqvist	Bass
Release	31 Oct. 2006	Tobias Persson	Drums
Country	Sweden	-	Keyboard
Similar artists	Darkane

Closer hails from Sweden and here they are giving us their debut in form of a mcd baptised Darkness In Me, released through Singapore based label Pulverised Records and put on tape at the Studio Mega in Varberg, Sweden. If this had been a matter of good looking design and taste, Closer would have been world champions by now, due to the tasty and nice printed cover to Darkness In Me. Unfortunately for Closer it takes a bit more to convince the masses.

Darkness In Me is a journey over three songs of quite technical and modern thrash with an appropriate harsh and aggressive hardcore styled vocalist in Andreas Mellberg. Spontaneously the music gives me very little, some good arrangements but way too often it feels anonymous and a bit grey. Even though Darkness In Me has some quite aggressive arrangements it just doesn't bite. Pretty much like The Haunted and Darkane and their typical structures and it shows that the musical knowledge and skillness peaks but in Closer's case it doesn't matter.

This is way too ordinary for my taste. As I said there are many good individual performances on Darkness In Me but it doesn't hold it together. Too bad because the potential is high over average in this band. An ok production but way too seldom really exciting. Next time perhaps?

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
7	3	6	5	4

Summary
5 chalices of 10 - Tim