Review
Tragedy
Darker Days Ahead

Having the ability to keep an album under wraps until the band goes out on tour is pretty impressive in this day and age (particularly with the internet and all), and, when Tragedy snuck this album out during a tour, it brought a level of excitement and excitement to their upcoming tour (besides raising the chatter on the internets to a somewhat fevered anticipation); but the best aspect of the whole gist is that Tragedy has a new album that is ready to pound their black wearing cadre into utter submission (yes, this is a bit of a stereotype, but I thought it was worth a chuckle or two) with their easily distinguished harangue of political vitriol and galloping guitars (of both the regular and bass variety of course) and drums.

Darker Days Ahead shows Tragedy spreading their wings and veering a little bit out of their musical comfort zone by adding new sounds and playing with their compositional formula, and besides enduring the shock of hearing drones in a Tragedy song (hear it for yourself in the “No Cemeteries Here”) the appearance of an acoustic guitar (again in “No Cemeteries Here”) is jarring; but these instances are not the whole of their bag of tricks as the pronounced bass line in “Close At Hand” makes a similar impact the first few times that you play the record, and some of these new tricks make for some truly great moments on the album (check out the droning ambient sound and the clean guitar tones in the introduction to “The Grim Infinite” and tell me that the effect is not pretty awesome, particularly when the mid tempo gallop hits). Darker Days Ahead feels like a slower album in almost every way compared to the other records that Tragedy has unleashed onto the world, and where those albums seemingly attacked with their ferocity and speed and utter relentless bludgeoning, Darker Days Ahead, by comparison, seethes with a moodier fierceness (the title track exemplifies this more moody aspect so well) that boarders on a doom-y influence (listen to how “Black Against The Night” comes in and then drops down when the vocals hit and tell me that is not reminiscent of doom) in the compositions of the music (and I could swear that there are more guitar leads on this album too but that just is an impression and not a wholly accurate statement) .

After listening to Darker Days Ahead a whole bunch, the initial shocks (I was not into what Tragedy did on this album at first because it just seemed too slow and not vicious enough for what I wanted from their music) of what I was listening to wore off; and the songs really started to sink in to my thick skull and eventually turned me into a fan of what this record had to offer. Tragedy surely have created their moodiest record yet with Darker Days Ahead, and the songs truly kick a great deal of ass (after “getting” the record, I do not think I could skip a single song all the way through the last song, “To Earth Like Dust” and its awesome vocal pattern); all of us appreciators of their music may just need to catch up with the band and what they are trying to do for us to truly appreciate this album.