Shadows of the Night

Being a collector of heavy metal you can pretty much put records in three categories. First you have your easily accessible albums that are pretty well known and receive lots of mainstream attention. Secondly you have a whole bunch of lost relics that seemed to receive little recognition in their time, but now seem to be quite well known and sought after by indulgers of the obscure. The third category is more of a grey spot or, as I like to call it the twilight zone (Not that I’ve ever referred to it that way before writing this). The twilight zone is a place where few visit but many records live. A place where “category one” listeners have trouble finding, not being hungry enough to explore the dark woods, contempt with the sunny fields of your Judas Priest’s and Iron Maiden’s. “Category two” listeners being more likely to know the records in the twilight zone still often pass them unlistened in favour for obscure favourites such as for example Gotham City and Stormqueen. Dark Heart from Northallerton are one of these overlooked yet easily accessible bands.

Dark Heart are said to have evolved from Tokyo Rose who featured four tracks on Guardian Record’s 1983 compilation album entitled Pure Overkill. The line-ups couldn’t have been identical, the vocalist and at least another member or two must have come across in the early months of ’84. Even some of the musical passages in the Tokyo Rose songs sound similar to passages on Shadows of the Night. Take the pre-chorus riff from Lost in the Heat and compare it to main verse/chorus riff from Shout it Out for example.

Shadows of the Night is purely hooks, that’s simply what it’s about and why it’s so great. Every single musical note off this album is constructed in such a catchy no-filler fashion. With the minor exceptions of the strange instrumental blues rock intro to Shout It Out and the semi ballad Turn the Tide, which aren’t bad in their own right, Just different. It’s almost like Dark Heart heard that Diamond Head riff in Helpless from 3:25 and noticed how effective it is to put cool power-chord and bass line progressions under catchy riffs and decided to make a whole album of these riffs and catchy harmonies (Though in actual fact the influence could have come from anywhere). They don’t quite merit the musical competence or experience of Diamond Head. With most of their songs being constructed fairly simplistically and more focused on writing simple hooks rather than the “riffs, riffs, riffs” onslaught of Diamond Head. But it’s that philosophy put into consciously writing these simple yet elegant classics that’s so attractive. Maybe it’s just my amazement that a band can write so many songs on a single 12” piece of vinyl that are consistently so catchy that intrigues. I could almost quote the chorus of any song on this album as being the catchiest. But the standout favourites would probably be the occult flavored Don’t Break the Circle (Much better than the Demon song of the same title), Dangerous Games and the simplistic yet hooky Giving It All For Love.

There are however a few criticisms I have with an album like this the main two being guitar tone and songwriting. Well wait…Didn’t I just go on for a paragraph before about how great the songwriting was? Well yes but song writing of this nature is a double edged blade. Although this album hasn’t yet become tedious I notice with such simple songwriting often can lead you astray; Grim Reaper’s 1983 debut being a good example of a different type of “hooks philosophy” taken to a tedious extreme. The titles of their songs mindlessly repeated over and over as a chorus, repetitive guitar riffs etc. Now as I said I don’t get that feeling from Shadows of the Night yet, but there is a slight future possibility. More of a criticism however would be the guitar tone! It sounds like the bridge pick-up was broken so the whole album was recorded on the neck pick-up with the gain barely turns up (yes low distortion). Although it’s heavy metal I’d say the guitar tone isn’t that much thicker than some of the heavier Beatles tracks. It’s by far one of the weakest un-heavy guitar tones in the genre. Lucky the riffs were written in a heavy fashion with heavy power-chord progressions to back them up. But the solos need some more gain and sustain, such a weak tone, heavy metal solos are meant to scream not whisper. That being said the solos still rock in a fairly primitive way it’s more a production criticism aspect of the album.

No excuse not to pick this one up, Even with vinyl collecting making a major come back this can still be obtained online for around $10 US. After this release most of Dark Heart would fade away with Colin Bell later joining former Dark Heart members Phil Brown and Steve Small in the “thrashier” Holosade while Alan Clark would struggle on with Dark Heart in a shadowed form of their original glory. Shadows of the Night is the best legacy any of the band involved would release over their varied careers.