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Damnations Day: A World Awakens
Damnations Day A World Awakens CD Album Review

Damnations Day: A World Awakens

Progressive Metal
3.5/5.0

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Sensory Records
Words: Craig Hartranft
Added: 09.03.2017

Hailing from Australia, brothers Mark Kennedy (guitar and vocals) and Dean Kennedy (drums) have been playing together since 2005 as Damnations Day. With the recording of 2013's Invisible, The Dead, they've added lead guitarist John King. The album received critical acclaim across the metal underground, and led to a host of live performance opportunities in the last few years. Notable of these was opening for Accept's European tour in 2014. The trio of players returns with their second effort, A World Awakens, now on the Sensory Records label.

Damnations Day Band Photo

Damnations Day

The new album is basically a companion to the previous one. Damnations Day continues their familiar musical themes. Building upon a foundation of traditional heavy metal they add the riff rage of thrash, some speed from power metal, and then drop it in to a prog metal wrapper. At the center of all this are two prominent elements. The first is Mark Kennedy versatile vocal style. He has strength, range, and control, all the while singing clean. He can be as pitched and sharply rising with the music as within The Witness or Diagnose. Or he can dial down for subtlety and passion as with the acoustic number Into Black. The second persuasive element is King's guitar lines. With Mark, he adds to the brisk, sharp, and charging twin guitar riffage and rhythm. After these things, when allowed, King burns up the fret board with fiery solos, notable within Colours Of Darkness and To Begin Again. I say "when allowed" because more often than not the guitar line favors the sharp rawness of the riffage.

And that, in one sense, describes the overall musical tone and timbre of the album. It's rather raging in the riffage, sometimes devastatingly so when mixed with thrash-like fury, speed, and a thundering volatile rhythm section, heard within Dissecting The Soul, A World Awakens, and especially the nearly punishing The Idol Counterfeit. In these mixtures, Mark Kennedy's voice was quite pitched as well, but it felt more like he was being raped by the music. Essentially, if you like your progressive metal a bit more assertive and sharp, a tad more raging and menacing, you will find Damnations Day and their sophomore album A World Awakens of some interest.

Damnations Day - A World Awakens



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The Bottom Line

If you like your progressive metal a bit more assertive and sharp, a tad more raging and menacing, you will find Damnations Day and their sophomore album A World Awakens of some interest.

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