John Henry and Darkest Hour played a triumphant hometown gig at 9:30 Club on Monday night. (All photos by Josh Sisk/FTWP)Darkest Hour might be D.C.’s hardest working band. For more than a decade, the heavy-metal quintet has been touring endlessly, both at home and abroad. They have played at Ozzfest and, quite possibly, in your neighbor’s basement. On Monday night, the group delivered a energetic, if dutiful, 40-minute set at 9:30 Club, riding near the top of the Summer Slaughter tour’s 11 band bill. At vocalist John Henry’s request, local fans rallied into a churning mosh-pit, charging across the club’s floor to pound at one-another in a brotherly, but bruising way.
Darkest Hour’s music is a hybrid of two severe subcultures – merging hardcore punk riffage with the shrieked vocals and blast beats commandeered from Swedish black metal. The tunes are complex, almost to the point of abstraction. Glassy harmonies zigzag into brutalist pounding. Darkest Hour has never mellowed out, but is has become increasingly tuneful over the years. On the group’s most recent record, “The Human Romance,” vocalist John Henry tweaks his growl-to-melody ratio in the latter category’s favor, grumbling fully sing-along hooks. And the band’s arrangements have become less claustrophobic, frequently indulging in spacious interludes.
Unlike their ax-wielding peers, like Mastodon and Baroness, Darkest Hour are creatures of the rational world. While the lyrical imagery often calls upon the macabre – skeletons, pestilence, death – the sentiments lean toward social criticism and self-examination. On recent fare, like “Savor the Kill” and “Love as a Weapon,” they even skew a bit emo.
Still, they emote at the highest possible volume. Darkest Hour may not be wizards and warlocks band, but they can still bring out the devil horns
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