The Reasoning - Dark AngelRelease: October 9, 2008
Genre: Progressive rock
Label: Comet Music
Length: 51:35
Nick's Rating: 4/5
It was briefly fashionable in the progressive rock world, for those bands who knew what fashion was, to borrow your style from Porcupine Tree. While I have respect for Steven Wilson and all of his projects, as Porcupine Tree the man, as Porcupine Tree the band, producing Opeth or being a King Crimson fanboy, I am deeply disappointed by this fact. The reason why Mr. Tree became so big is mostly because of In Absentia (a good album), Deadwing (even better), and Fear of a Blank Planet (too heavy-handed at times, but pretty cute), especially that first one. At the time, I hated it. I still think it's not nearly the band's best, but their catalogue also includes Lightbulb Sun, so what can you do about that?
At around the same time, metal bands also put out a decent number of "return to form" albums (Voivod's self-titled, Megadeth's The System Has Failed and United Abominations) or made it big (Nightwish's Once). Thank you for mentioning Nightwish, also; Dark Angel borrows enough pieces of gothic-style metal that, at first, you will want to grit your teeth and ask "Where the fuck did I hear this from, and when did it get so damn slow?" A lot of the album is like that, really, but more of it draws from the more obvious progressive influences like Porcupine Tree and Marillion, and thankfully, just because it draws a lot from these bands and is based a reasonable bit on a super-predictable musical model (which may be closer to Epica or early After Forever, if the latter sounds like what I think it does, in that it cares a lot about having male vocals be as important as female vocals. Unlike Epica, though, the male vocals are actually clean.). Thankfully, it's a good one, but it does detract a lot from how interesting the album is.
I can't really say what song is "best," they all have basically the same good and bad to them. Most of them sound too much like someone was listening to Nightwish or, dare I say it, Evanescence, when writing these, and the genre's need for complexity is rarely met (as is basically the case with Porcupine Tree). I guess I'll just go with the second song, "Sharp Sea," which probably is about a vampire tring to seduce her victim, or... something, I don't even want to know, okay? The important parts that contribute to my counting this as good is that it reminded me a lot of Deadwing/Fear-era Porcupine Tree in its general sound, and the melody of the chorus seems to recall the song "Survival" from Yes' very first album. I always loved that song, and trying to replicate its melody is a noble cause. "Call Me God?" is pretty cute, too, for similar reasons as why everything on Deadwing or Fear is. It's strong and sardonic, which is fun ad just right for the modern audience. In fact, this whole album, even at its most average (almost all of it!) is pretty cute, because it could fit just as well into the playlists of a fan of neo-prog and a Twihard. (Defining my opinions on Twilight is a fait accompli, but I still find this adorable.)
Though it's not exactly on-topic, I think I should say it anyway: there seems to be an odd construct about rock music today, that, for the large part, it's still the domain of men, to the point where the presence of a female member of the band immediately is a focal point. Have a look at the pictures for The Reasoning on last.fm and count how many don't focus a fair bit on Rachel Cohen. Almost every picture features her, and many feature ONLY her. For those pictures that don't show her, you'll notice they're usually very low down the list (the images are ordered according to how much they're liked, by the way). It's probably sexual, and I guess I can understand that, but most fans, regardless of whether sex is the point, will focus more on Cohen as the lead singer than the musicality of the album, which is disappointing. If The Reasoning made it big today, it would probably be because people would be trying to focus on how best to compare it to Evanescence or how sexy the lead singer is (if the label was really corrupt), when they'd be missing the entire point, that these are actually good songs.
Okay, so I'm being a little cynical, but this is a good album, shockingly, and one of the proofs that modern music is not dead, but that its vitality lies in something the radio doesn't want to grasp hold of, like this, or Traced In Air, or Voivod. The old mainstays have led us to Linkin Park and Lady Gaga taking home massive quantities of records. My qualms with Lady Gaga are mostly faded, but she's not as good as everyone gives her credit for, or at least unwilling to show that she is, and Linkin Park won't be forgiven for making me think, in my youth, that they were good thanks to their prevalence in AMVs and the like. We all make bad decisions in our life, indeed. Buying Dark Angel wouldn't be one of those. I'm only suggesting you buy it this time because this is an artist in desperate need of support. Mainstream professional critics can't be assed to write about it, there's no singles, and no advertisements for it. How will people who are too lazy to search for things going to discover this album, then?
Yes, I am actually extolling the virtues of mainstream critics and advertising for once. I'm going to go stab myself in the back for you right now. And I guess I didn't go over a lot of the songs in much depth, but there isn't a lot of depth to this album.
