Zero Hour: Dark Deceiver (2008)

Sensory Records

1. Power to Believe – 7:07
2. Dark Deceiver – 3:56
3. Inner Spirit – 12:19
4. Resurrection – 3:18
5. Tendonitis – 1:19
6. The Temple Within – 6:13
7. Lies – 3:20
8. The Passion Of Words – 4:32
9. Severed Angel – 2:37

Zero Hour’s Dark Deceiver is existing and tangible proof that you don’t need to be intelligent in order to call yourself Progressive. The band’s fifth offering, they cannot claim being young and relatively inexperienced as an excuse. The album feels like one huge mess of Power Metal riffage and the like. The songs are relatively indistinguishable from each other, save the track, “Tendonitis”. Despite that, I still find myself crawling back to it. Perhaps it’s my inner fanboy for all things epic, aggressive and just plain Metal, but either way, it somehow manages to stay in my playlist.

I heard of this band through a blog on Dream Theater’s MySpace. They were talking about how they were to be a performer at some San Francisco Prog festival. After a very quick listen on the band’s MySpace, I decided this album might be worth acquiring. The first impression you get is of unorthodox songwriting, freeform song structures, fast playing, and power metal vocals. You will be impressed before the album sort of sinks in, and you realize exactly what it is.

Every song sort of sounds like the other. You have very strong and crispy distorted guitars repeating a very heavy and aggressive riff backed by the most annoying, pretentious and ostentatious bass in the history of music. Every now and then, the two guitars and bass break into a three way polymelody that derails every song from any kind of logical melodic development, then goes back into another heavy riff, then suddenly drops in dynamic to something soft and melodic to build the song back up.

Now…none of that is bad, per say, but when it’s executed as poorly as it is on this album, there is an obvious problem. The songwriting is not bad; all of the riffs and melodies are catchy, heavy, what have you. The problem is that the way they’re pasted together exudes a lack of cohesion, flow and logical development. Sure, it’s “Progressive”, so it shouldn’t follow orthodox styles or tradition, but there’s a limit before you become another band that tries to be.

I think the entire album could have been saved despite it’s too oddball songwriting if it weren’t for the bassist, Troy Tipton. I have no idea who he is, and I’ve never heard of him before. Despite that, he plays shit on this album like he’s the Yngwie Malsteem of bass and he’s got to prove it. His bass parts have too many notes, and is often simply too fast and too technical for it to fit into the song. Bass is bass. Bass is rhythm. Bass is backing. Especially in a twin guitar band, the bass should not have a lead of it’s own. Then again, maybe it could, and I bet with some decent songwriting, someone could pull it off exceedingly well and completely flip what I just wrote on its ass. Zero Hour, however, does not pull it off.

This comes to a head in the track, “Tendonitis”. It is a 2:19 second solo that begins and ends with an annoying little six-year-old kid being pretentious for Tipton. It is two minutes of pointless bass “shred”. It serves no purpose on the album, except maybe as some kind of a intermission from the relative monotony that is the rest of the album.

The vocal work is pretty decent. The guy has a great power metal voice with a great range. Sometimes, the vocal melody seems a bit counter-intuitive, but I suppose it would have to be when the instruments are written as a-melodically as they often are on this album. It is plainly obvious that the music for the instruments were written before the vocal parts. This is not necessarily a bad thing…but sometimes, the vocals feel like they were thrown in for the sake of having vocals.

The only really notable songs that stuck out to me were the ones that had passages where the bass was somewhat toned down, and the song was allowed more melody and some rational development. “Dark Deceiver”, “Inner Spirit”, “Resurrection” and “Temple Within” are those that were written with some sense, even if they had rather shaky starts.

Now, don’t get me wrong; the musicians on this album have to be more than capable in order to be able to play these songs. However, I am simply saying that they go over the top to the point where my cynicism drives in, and I enjoy these songs much less than I’m sure they meant for me to.

Again, the songs can be fun. Many of the riffs are catchy, and most of the songs develop into better songs farther into the track than at the start. It is decent Progressive Power Metal, I suppose. There is better out there, but if you’re like me, and like to have a wide variety of music of any genre you’re into, and are looking to expand your catalog for the sake of having a bigger catalog, then sure, pick this one up.

It is not a great album. However, it is also not a bad album. I hesitate to call it good, but then again, I suppose there’s a limit to how much I can judge.

Stephen’s mostly inane and irrelevant Rating:

*** 2/5 Stars.