On Darker Days Ahead, the still very underground crust/hardcore/metal/whatever unit Tragedy has expanded its usual speedy D-Beat assault to include a feeling of cinematic grandiosity and touches of outright doom metal. Actually, doom is the keyword for this entire release. Tragedy is building a world with Darker Days Ahead, and that world is dying slowly. The songs are vignettes of burned out cars, collapsing buildings, and toxic sunrises.
At one point Tragedy could be called a hardcore band, but their music has been alloyed with so many interesting sounds outside of the hardcore template that there's not really a category for them anymore. The band has a steady roar all its own, and despite the influences from so many different places, they manage to turn it all into a cohesive whole. Of course, for the most part the guitars are thick and nastily distorted, and the drums are pummeling, even at slower speeds, and the vocals might not actually be human in origin. But while the D-Beat feel, and the necessary debt to bands like Discharge that come with it, are still present, the tempos have a tendency to slow down more on this album, and clean guitar and bass tones (gasp) can be heard in many of the songs, where they create instrumental textures far more melodic than Tragedy have released before.
There's a sinister alchemy at work with these new elements, where they add up to paint a picture even more bleak than they could have done by simply thrashing away. There's shades of old Godflesh albums on this release, and it's all done to great effect to create a crushing hopelessness. There is no redemption on Darker Days Ahead. Things are not going to get better in the world that's presented here. For Tragedy, the light on the horizon is just the glow of irradiated desert. They're letting you hear what the end sounds like, and it's so impeccably crafted that you can't help but listen.
-Review by TZARATHUSTRA
