The Dark Discovery

Evergrey’s debut album is a rather mixed affair. It already contains the blueprint of the distinctive sound the band will develop to amazing results in the course of their career, showing that Evergrey were unafraid to try and carve their own way in a scene – that of progressive metal – that at the time was overcrowded with dozens of bands all sounding like clones of Dream Theater. However, one also has the definite impression that Evergrey did not quite yet know what to do with their newly-found sound: the songwriting is rather aimless and uninspired and the delivery seems rushed and underdeveloped. To make things worse, the production is atrocious: even for the standards of the time, the album sounds pretty bad and amateurish. As I said, quite a mixed affair.

Evergrey are the kings of despair. All their albums are brooding, dark, melancholic beasts and The Dark Discovery is no exception. The band’s sound is rooted in classic heavy metal (Iron Maiden, King Diamond, Savatage), but Evergrey brings in a lot of more contemporaneous influences, from US power/ thrash metal (Iced Earth come to mind), to symphonic and prog metal, and even gothic metal (for example, in the use of female vocals and choirs). The prog metal ambitions are also evident in the complexity of the compositions, with songs that are typically 4 to 5 minutes long and are occasionally weaved together by recurring themes, forming mini-suites in the classic progressive rock tradition (“As Light Is Our Darkness”; “Beyond Salvation”). However, the most distinctive element of Evergrey’s sound is without doubt Tom S. Englund’s voice. His vocal delivery – here as in all subsequent albums of the band – is unique. The typical male prog metal singer, especially at the time, is known for his high-pitched and cleanly aseptic vocals. Englund’s delivery lies at the opposite end of the spectrum. His tone is dark and his voice is husky. Yet, his vocals are incredibly melodious, setting him apart from the heavier thrash metal canon where gravelly voices like Englund’s are more common. Englund’s singing is passionate and dramatic: he is one of those singers who seem to live on their skin the lyrics they sing. To this day, there are not many vocalists that sound like Englund, he is one of a kind and is widely recognized as such in the scene.

Although “The Dark Discovery” contains all the right ingredients to make for an interesting ride, it ultimately falls flat. There are two main reasons for this. First, the album mostly contains weak and forgettable material. Quite simply, the eleven songs of “The Dark Discovery” are not very good. I chalk this down largely to the band’s inexperience. The songwriting feels directionless and underdeveloped. Most of the songs build and build, but do not really seem to go anywhere and they lack the melodic hooks to leave a lasting impression on the listener. Evergrey attempt to inject some dynamics in the songs, alternating quiet and heavy parts throughout the album, but in most cases the transitions are not very smooth and come across as rushed. The arrangements are also quite weak. For instance, the keyboard parts do not seem to really fit in with the rest of the music and in most songs they feel out of place. Patrick Carlsson’s drum work is impressive, but his intricate drumming does not always gel well with the guitar and bass, which are instead quite basic and pedestrian. This is another issue I have with the album: neither Englund nor Dan Bronell strike me as very proficient guitar players. Their riffage is average and samey, which really bogs down most of the material of the album. The guitar solos also do not sound particularly inspired. The performances of guest musicians Andy LaRocque (King Diamond) and Mattias Ia Eklundh (Freak Kitchen), who provide solos on “Closed Eyes” and “When the River Calls”, are far superior and make you wonder how much better this album could have been if Evergrey had a slightly more proficient guitar player in their rooster.

The second reason why I think the album does not really work is the sound production that is really poor even for 1990s standards. It is actually quite surprising that this is the case, given that the LP was recorded and mixed at Los Angered Recordings studios by Andy LaRocque, who will end up producing quite a few top-notch albums in his career. Yet, The Dark Discovery really sounds terrible. The guitars are murky and mushy to the point that, whatever riff Englund and Bronell manage to come up with, it all ends up sounding the same. Even Englund’s vocals suffer from the rather poor mix by LaRocque, which makes the singer barely audible at times. That the mix is quite poor is also clear from the fact that the drums, keyboards and guitars do not really gel well in any of the songs.

Overall, The Dark Discovery is really only an album for completionists. It contains mostly weak material that is badly produced and has not aged well at all. Yet, this is where the Evergrey magic started, so the album remains archaeologically interesting for those who are curious to track down the roots of the sound that brought Evergrey to fame. And that sound is all already here – dark, gloomy and dramatic, Evergrey have been sounding like Evergrey since the very beginning.

Evergrey try to sound like every other band on the planet but themselves on their desperately ultra-heavy debut, "The Dark Discovery". It is not a necessarily shabby debut - it is just pale and bland and thoroughly vanilla from brickwalled end to brickwalled end. Angel Dust, Morgana Lefay and Patriarch are the subset to which this charmless prog endeavour belongs. There's that shallow aura of darkness communicated through the dense but static riffing and in the half baked lyrics...if only they had spent more time refining those songs, one can't help but feel. At their best, Evergrey are a convincingly bleak affair who sail on Englund and Bronell's intricate hooks and catchy progressions and Englund's passionate and enchanting croon. Here you can barely hear him though. He sounds lost underneath all this lumbering guitar muck. When he shines through as on "Shadowed", one of the album's highlights, he steals the show, giving muscle to a song whose riffs have utterly failed it.

"The Dark Discovery" lacks refinement. It hasn't aged well at all and in the grand scheme of all things Evergrey, it doesn't seem to serve much of a purpose. Thankfully, the band got better on subsequent releases but this dire preamble of a vacuum is also a sort of reflective mirror through which their more generic and phoned-in moments can be traced back. The blandness that thrives in tunes like "When The River Calls" has many a cousin down the Evergrey discography and in bands like Aeon Zen. Tom S. Englund is of course phenomenal and does his best to keep you entertained. But some of his pleas come off unconvincing and it begins to seem as if he is rushing through every song to exhibit better passion in the next. He gets his big moment on "For Every Tear That Falls" with his measured husky tone balanced perfectly with Carina Englund's sweet soaring. The sorrow is a bit too nuanced but the song ultimately ends up being "The Dark Discovery"'s most memorable piece. Quite pathetic that a ballad should be the highlight but then again, the change of pace is what does it.

There seems to be some concept at hand (I think someone murders their best friend?) but the poor lyricism doesn't enable much investigation. And because there's a real lack of variety and dynamism, it doesn't make for much progressiveness. Englund and Bronell are skilled guitarists whose licks are budding solos that never grow. Andy LaRocque throws in his two cents at some point but not enough to retain awe. Will Chandra's keyboard lingerings swoop around like pesky flies making you wish everyone could just break out and have a ball. They do so to some degree on the album closer, "To Hope Is To Fear" but by then it is rather too late. The prevailing mood of the album is one of suppression and restraint and not the adventure that the title "The Dark Discovery" promises you with. A lot of time is spent cultivating thickness with no concern whatsoever for texture and the common joys of riff harmony - remember Iron Maiden, boys and girls? Whatever soul can be filtered through this shambles is gotten from Englund whose great vocal presence never wavers.

"December 26th" does its groove dynamics well if you're into that sort of thing and "Closed Eyes" succeeds at building tension and crafting a dark epic around its swampy melodies and questing riffs. Indeed sublime moments like those show up every now and then but you have to invest enthusiasm to snag them. Running in the seemingly opposite prog direction of their countrymen Opeth, here is a debut album worthy of every underestimation it gets. Because sometimes prog really needs the excessive boldness it is blamed for or else we suffer blandness such as this.

Finding a band that can breathe a breath of fresh air into the lungs of a slowly dying breed of rock is hard to find these days. "Evergrey", however, might just be the answer to the immortal question, "Where did all the good progressive metal acts go?"

It is hard to actually find a good progressive metal act out in the world today. Especially one that can blend such dark and frightening topics such as paranoia and regret with amazing progressive metal, as well as some power metal and gothic metal. Quite a combination going there for them. The album can easily be described as an amazing blend of metal. From start to finish, you are bombarded by various styles. You have your fast, deep, and powerful songs, followed by your really slow, acoustic, break-out-your-lighter-and-sing-in-unison-with-the-vocalist type songs, and then you just have your songs that are in between. There's no constant beat that the band lives up to, bringing a wide array of styles with their presentation.

The lyrics are very deep and meaningful, as well as sometimes spiritual. However, sometimes you cannot hear the vocals. Due to a somewhat low production quality (which is understandable for a band's debut album, especially given the time frame that this CD was actually released overseas in 1998), you can hear the music loudly and amazingly, but the vocals sound faded and off in the distance. And, if you are a real stick-in-the-mud, you can hear some small pops of volume in the song 'Closed Eyes', where the volume level picks up a bit, a cymbol crashes, and the guitars are suddenly real low again, sounding as if the CD skipped slightly, and not as though this sound was done on purpose.

Outside of that, the album is really good. One minute you are given a platter of really fast guitar riffs, the next you are given a slow and meaningful song of passion and fear. It's an odd combination, but it makes for one of the best progressive releases in a long while. If you haven't already, check this one out for yourself.