Cirith Ungol - Dark Parade (2023)

With the news that Cirith Ungol has retired from touring after 2024, one can only wonder what the future might hold for the studio side of their collective career. But if Dark Parade ends up being the last that they record (and perhaps it isn't), they could retired with full confidence that they survived a quarter century hiatus and returned to rival all of their original output. Though my heart belongs to One Foot in Hell, there is no question that this record is the best-balanced, most impressively produced and heaviest proof of concept they've ever released, one that hooks you directly with its first and most exciting tune (unlike the Half Past Human EP before it), and then never really lets the listener go from its dour and overpowering paean to epic swords and sorcery, through the might of American heavy/doom metal!

This album sounds so fantastic that it almost feels like clones of the band from another dimension found the secret to immortality and transported themselves into our reality to continue the Californians' sound forward. Most of the guys in the band were in, what, their 60s, and sound like they can crush the fuck out of you with the simple squeeze of a hand. Tim Baker's voice sounds as mighty as ever, and I often find myself wondering how he can do that stuff without it hurting. (Maybe it does?) Robert Garven lays down a simplistic and straightforward set of beats but puts so much power into them you can just feel yourself lurching along with ever kick and snare, there isn't a single strike misplaced, and the bass has a great presence curving along with the slate-carved rhythm guitars, though it doesn't pop out as much as on the EP. The mix is loud, crystal clear but man do the guitars slam into you as they're chugging along, and the bluesy, burning leads are just dirty and dusty enough to send me flying back to my early teens and One Foot in Hell obsession. It sometimes feels like they tapped into my love of "Blood & Iron" and made a whole album just out of that.

"Velocity (E.S.P.)" is so awesome that I remember repeating it several times before I'd even pay any attention to the rest of the disc, which by the way, did not let me down. Other favorites include the glorious, fell majesty of the Moorcock tribute "Sailor on the Seas of Fate", the hammering "Looking Glass" which has verses that feel the perfect soundtrack to a smithy forging instruments of war, and the epic finale "Down Below" which has thunder fucking drum fills and some of Baker's most angry and bitter howls that seem to condemn the very listener to the implied underworld to perish eternally in its most sulfurous and fiery pits. With age, Cirith Ungol seems to get ANGRIER, and it's a beautiful thing, not that they can't lay in some nice acoustic segues or wa wa leads to evoke the wonder of 70s and 80s fantastical sword & sorcerous landscapes, but this one gets the best at its heaviest and though the songs might not rign out in my memory as much as "Blood and Iron", "Chaos Descends", "Nadoskor" or "Doomed Planet",this record deserves all the praise I could hoist upon that one, and TECHNICALLY you might say this is their peak performance. I mean if I were picking an album to introduce someone new to their sound, this is that choice. Can they top it? Will they? Do they even need to?

Verdict: Epic Win [9/10]

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