CD REVIEW Dark Sky

Band : Dark Sky

Album title : Empty Faces

Label : AOR Heaven

Distributor : Rough Trade

Release date : 27/06/2008

Release : CD

This Melodic Heavy Rock band was originally founded in 1982 as a school act in Rottweil (South Germany), and like so many young acts they suffer from a constantly changing line-up. In spite of that, the band still sees the possibility to record the occasional demo. Things could've changed for the better as soon as 1986, when a record company gets interested. Regretfully, the completed recordings for a debut album are never released, the label filing bankrupsy due to monetary problems. The quintet releases then their Living In Eternity demo in 1989, and this recording session got the band national attention when it won a talent contest, leading to a total of 30 South German concerts in the later part of the year...but in 1990 two of the band's key members (the singer and guitarist) left at the same time, and even though two members enter the fold that same year, the bad timing of the line-up change leads to the band's split in 1992.

Original guitar/ keyboard player Frank Breuninger resurrected the band a year later as the new singer, and first recruiting guitarist Ashes and keyboard player Claudio Nobile, he then finally completes the line-up with the addition of the rhythm section duo of Winny Zurek (bass) and Uwe Mayer (drums). Purely for fun, the band again participates in a band contest in 1996, and they make it to the finales. In 1997 the band starts the records of its debut album Believe It (it would take a year to complete), which is first released in the Far East (malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, and Indonesia) in late August 1998. The band becomes the first Western act to ever have brought a song in the communal language of the region with the song "Masih Ada Rindu". A year later the band signed a deal with Goodlife for a distribution (in most of Europe, Japan, and the USA) of the album in 2000. Second Goodlife album Edge Of Time was recorded in April 2002, and saw guest appearances of former Dark Sky guitarist Steffen Doll and singer Jojo Nimtz. Ashes quit on completion of the album, thus enabling the re-enstatement of Doll, who made a favourable impression wit his performance during the ensuing German tour with Twyster in Autumn 2002. And in early 2003 the band is back in the studio to record a track called "Back Again". Meant to be in support of cycle hero Jan Ullrich's participation to the Tour De France, the band finds no label to release the single, as Ullrich's performances leading up to the event were shaky to say the least, and no label wanted to take the financial risk to ally itself to a sportif failure! Too bad, because the cyclist did very well indeed that year's Tour!At the begining of 2004 sessions were started to write and pre-produce the band's third album Living & Dying, and the Mark Teske produced demo got the band a deal in August with AOR Heaven for the release of the album in March of 2005.

The ensuing concerts get very positive results, and during Summer the band is able to get to a higher profile by supporting Scorpions on two occasions. More concerts follow throughout the rest of the year, the high point of which was the 30-date December German tour in support of British Melodic Rockers Thunder. 2006 starts off quite calmly for the band, a period the guys use to fiddle around with some new song ideas, and during the Summer they get to play support to Rock legend Mannfred Mann's Earth Band. A short spurt of gigs follow, before the band secludes itself in the rehearsal room to seriously start working on new material.

The result is now available on the 10...actually 11-track...album, counting the hidden bonus song "Final Day". The album opens with the feel-good "Hands Up". Keyboard-driven with nice and strong guitar lines in an up-tempo pace, plus catchy chorus lyrics brought by a singer who's got a pitch high enough to be recognized as "typically" Teutonic, yet has enough of a slight hoarseness about his voice to add an extra bit of warmness...what more do you need to feel happy? The rest of the album follows suit in the same vein, albeit with slight differences depending on the song. "Slave Of Time" has keyboards operating within organ tonality, which gives the track, in combination with the vocals and the up-tempo drive, a Teutonic Power Metal touch. The same goes for the ensuing "Send Them To Hell". For "Chase Your Dreams" the band bring down the pace somewhat, and the Neo-Classical influences in the solo turn the track into a Classic Rock anthem. Dark Sky then brings its version of the '80s hit "Maniac" (especially written for Flash Dance, one of the most successful dance movies of that era). Somewhat more energized in the guitar work than the original, the musicians otherwize nevertheless follows the original tune almost perfectly, even in its up-tempo pace. The ensuing "Saints Beneath The Sky" again sees the band on a calmer pace, but with strong guitar work and lavish keyboard layers (including some synths), the song can hardly be called a ballad! Nevertheless, one of the better songs on the album composition-wize! While "Pleasure And Pain" starts off like a Classic Rock tune of medium pace, it gets some additional AOR feel in the chorus backing vocals. For "Believe It", the band has taken a vocal stance which would enable it to be called a semi-ballad, if it weren't that the music simply doesn't follow suit, staying in the "heavier" side of Classic Rock! The piano-driven "Meaning Of Life" (with extra "violin" keyboards) doés flow in the semi-ballad vein, and does so with nicely chanting lead and hardly distorted rhythm guitar. Of course there's passages with some heavier rhythm guitar, but that goes with the territory of the semi-ballad thing! The short hidden track "Final Day" (only 2:42 lons) sees the band using actual acoustic guitar (alongside a real short bit of electric one), and it takes the band about a minute into the song before they use drums and piano, another 15 seconds to go into a heavier part of the song, which is accompanied with really harmonic backing vocals. A truly magnificent semi-ballad if ever there was one!

End conclusion: a véry nice album, even if not really year-list material...or at least not in MY book! Of course, you're free to your own opinion, and to get an idea of what the band sounds like (before your possible purchase and equally possible year-list nomination of the album), I would rather direct you to the band's own website dark-sky.de, than to their MySpace (darskyrocks), because the only track off the Living & Dying album posted on the latter, can also be found on the first...alongside 4 tracks off the debut album, 3 tracks off Edge Of Time, 5 more tracks off Living And Dying, and 3 off the new album!

90/100

Tony.