Welcome back to Throwback Thursday! This is the place where we get to indulge in nostalgia and wax poetic about excellent metal of years past. TBT numbero 38 features an American band with and album that, despite your metal genre preference, you just need to listen to. Daath lays claim to one of the last decade's most under-rated treasures with their 2009 release The Concealers. This unflinchingly heavy album is intriguing from start to finish. Both intensely complex and wantonly thrashy, The Concealers manages to combine melody and technical ability into one memorable, but severely under-loved, release. Prepare to be pleased by…
DAATH'S THE CONCEALERS
Release Date: April 2009
Record Label: Century Media
I felt a sharp pang of nostalgia when fellow Injectionist Greg K. reminded me of the band Daath. Many years ago, I placed a song from their 2009 release The Concealers on a 2gb Ipod Shuffle that I had won in a drawing. Thrilled to have won something so darling, I Googled tons of new metal to check out, picked out band names that I thought sounded cool, sat for hours on torrent sites downloading tracks, and dumped as much new content as I could onto my tiny, shiny shuffle. One of the pieces of new music I had scooped up during my days of album thievery was Daath's "Day of Endless Night":
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn_aQwQUs2M][/youtube]
When I was recently reminded of the band, I put on The Concealers to relive the days when my music player and my phone were two separate entities – and couldn't quite believe what I was hearing. When did Daath get so fucking good?
The answer is that The Concealers has always been fantastic. Ten-ish years ago, I didn't have the musical palette I do now. After countless concert beers, festival sun burns, sweaty house shows, and a few mp3 players later, my tastes and my preferences in music have considerably shifted. Now what I hear is an incredible album, brutal from beginning to end, undeniably melodic and as dark as any death-metal contemporary.
What was once an album I liked because the name Daath sounded 'neat', is now an album I find hard to ignore. The Concealers has a subtlety akin to running someone over with a garden tiller. It's marching, it's heavy, and it's aggressive. However, the album does not rely alone on these 'tough-guy' staples of metal to create an image or a memorable album. What strikes me most about The Concealers are the variety of playful interspersed melodies found in the array of guitar work from Eyal Levi and Emil Werstler. Across the whole album there is a restraint from what are two very obviously talented artists. If they wanted to, they could've filled the album with impressive sweep-picking and noodly guitar solos in between constantly encroaching blast beats. Instead, The Concealers feels balanced and and satisfying rather than roving and exploratory. Check out one of my favorite tracks off of the album "Of Poisoned Sorrows":
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi6NBx89krk][/youtube]
"Of Poisoned Sorrows" is unlike any other track off the of album. It's wholly unexpected thanks to a strategic use of voice modulation and soundscaping. Yet, it doesn't feel out of place. Rather, it deepens the interest of the album and shows off the creativity behind the songwriting.
The Concealers doesn't falter in quality for even one track. Along side a continuous track-to-track quality is a carefully crafted brash and unfettered feeling in the mixing and production. In one of our strange and charming interviews, Rob Injection talks to the band about what it was like to work with Jason Suecof on producing the album. Suecof has worked with approximately a bajillion metal bands over last last decade or so producing, composing, mixing, and engineering. On The Concealers, we find vocals that are full, clear and crisp without sounding tinny or screechy, and guitar tones that have a great depth that emanate with energy and intensity. The unsung hero of most productions, the bass, also has a crackling distortion that manages to shy away from sounding fuzzy or nu-metaly while staying compelling and additive.
This album has aged really, really well. Upon it's release, it was critically met with mixed reviews (even from us). Listening to it now, in it's entirety, I am floored by the whole record. What an incredible piece of work that has, unfortunately, landed way under the radar of metaldom for the last decade. There is no question that The Concealers is highly underappreciated. It is masterful in design and memorable in it's execution. Everything the album reaches for – whether it be atmospheric transitions, traditional grinding, thrashy circle-pit moshing moments, or flirtations with proggy elements – it successfully pulls off. Check out the blistering opener to the album "Sharpen the Blades":
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ-Zu38iZJo][/youtube]
The record maintains that level of intensity without becoming boring for the entirety of the album. This is in part due to drummer Kevin Talley who takes well-chosen moments to vary intensity with selective change-ups. What shouldn't surprise me, but does, is that this band is from Atlanta, Georgia. To me, this album has the nuance of turn-of-the-century European melo-death that created a huge new crop of metal lovers. The Concealers successfully bridges a variety of genres while staying Pantera-level heavy; the song composition is just that thoughtful and the musicians just that capable.
The current status of Daath is that the band is on hiatus. Most of the band members have all moved on to a myriad of other projects, podcasts, and productions. It seems that Daath have remained relevant to many of their fans, but there are no rumors at this time of reunion.
Thanks to those that enjoyed The Concealers, Daath was able to tour for quite a few years alongside a variety of musicians such as Abigail Williams and Dragonforce, and upon festival lineups such as Ozzfest. Daath has other releases but hasn't produced an album under that band name since 2010. Rather than lament what is gone, I feel lucky that I get to discover an album this good all over again. It feels like finding a buried treasure. And, who knows what other gems lurk on that Ipod shuffle? Seriously who knows, because I lost and/or washed that goddamn thing years ago. But the likes of The Concealers shouldn't be relegated to a discarded Apple product; It's an album I'm happy to share today and I hope that if you haven't listened to it, you'll give it a try.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amNSHivLpI4][/youtube]
