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Transnight: The Dark Half
Transnight The Dark Half album new music review

Transnight: The Dark Half

Heavy/Power/Thrash Metal
2.5/5.0

Pure Underground Records
Website MySpace
by Craig Hartranft,  08.29.2011

Transnight is an upstart metal band from Ruhr district of Germany. After three demos, the band unleashes their first long-player on Pure Underground Records (a sub-division of Pure Steel Records). That's the basic information, but defining Transnight's metal might be a little confusing, or not. Three basic elements inform Transnight's sound, all from the classic school: heavy, power, and thrash metal. After that there's one distinguishing characteristic. Nearly every song does the same thing: mix heavy moderate tempos against more quick paced movements. Actually, it's rather redundant.

Classic heavy metal is blended with thrash and power metal; power metal is confused with thrash. A song starts fast, only to slow, and then get fast again, or some similar fashion, sometimes reversed. I'm not sure Transnight knows, or has settled into, their certain heavy metal direction. Do they want to be Manila Road, Anvil, Iron Maiden or some combination of whoever from the early Eighties. Check your skip button, and make sure it's functioning properly as you might need it. I did.

To their credit, there's a maximum amount of riffage, often melodic, throughout this work. But I can't say any element really stands out. Except that aforementioned fact that every song mixes tempos, weaves heavy, power, and thrash metal to inconclusive and often tiring results. Only two songs caught my interest. False Prophets offers nice riffage, and early guitar solo (one of few), and some classic thrash riffage. Lose Your Time approximates old school early Eighties metal, sufficient and entertaining enough, but certainly average. Otherwise, I'll take a pass on the rest.

I'm sure my friends at Pure Underground/Steel Records found or heard something in Transnight, but I'm not convinced. Give Transnight an 'A' for effort. Let's hope for better stuff in the future. The creepy, definitely metal, cover art might be the best feature of this record. But I'm simply trying to be postive and salvage something from my listening experience.






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In Short

As for Transnight's debut The Dark Half, I'm hovering between being ambivalent and dismissive. Their mixture of classic heavy, power, and thrash metal is nearly predictable, even redundant, throughout this recording. Explore with caution.

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