HALF LIGHT SOUVENIRS

Dark Suns is an Experimental/Post Metal band from Germany that was founded in 1997 by Tobias Gommlich and Niko Knappe. Tobias has since left the band and the doom metal sounds that were originally part of their sound is no longer a factor in their music. Their 6th album is called 'Half Light Souvenirs' and was released digitally in April of 2019. It will be released on CD and vinyl on June 7, 2019. It has 5 total tracks and a run-time of just over 30 minutes. The current line up consists of Niko Knappe on vocals along with Maik Knappe on guitars, Torsten Wenzel on guitars, Tim Gressler on bass, Ekky Meister on piano and organ and Dominique Ehlert on drums.

The music has a heavy edge to it at times, but almost seems to be more along the lines of Neo-prog or maybe Heavy Prog with a lot of synthesizer also included with the guitar heaviness. The music has some complexity to it, but the vocals seem quite mellow, somewhere between Steven Wilson's and Peter Nicholl's (IQ) vocals, but without the edge and energy. The musicianship is good enough and there are some very good instrumental sections throughout, but overall, it tends to lose steam with the vocals. The longer tracks, 'Trillianthem' and 'My Sermon' are the best, showing the best development and some excellent passages along the way, but there are weak spots throughout all of the tracks that take all of that steam away. Most of it has to do with the vocal sections, which don't really appeal to me.

The high points are just too few and far between, and there are just too many sections that drag along, so that even at only 30 minutes, it seems like it is too long. The music is definitely not experimental or post metal on this album. It also seems to lack enough life to even carry it through it's short run time. Anyway, because of a few high points, the album gets 3 stars.