Dark Sarah
The Puzzle

The cover of Dark Sarah’s second album looks kind of dangerous and exciting, a lot more so than the music actually delivers. I thought their debut album from last year was interesting and fairly exciting, this one feels a lot more cautious and a lot more ordinary – kind of like a tired Nightwish clone. Perhaps they were afraid that the T-rex on the cover would eat them unless they made a typical orchestral metal album or tried to venture outside the box.

The Puzzle is female fronted symphonic metal with operatic vocals with a standard selection of songs for the genre. Great sound, excellent production and vocals – there are many things to like about this album and I would not be surprised if those who liked the debut will find the ten tracks on this album rather interesting as well. They stick to what we usually hear within this genre and I would describe this as an album with no real surprises – and no real excitement. They do it well but there are so many that do so the risk is that they will be buried and forgotten very quickly.

The songs are good on the album and there are some semi-hits like the ending track and the opening one, but albeit the album is good I am also quite sure that it will be forgotten rather soon. The Puzzle is somewhere in the upper part of the average group of albums in the genre and I would select the debut that was released last year over this one any day of the week as it has better tracks and some real hit potential – something that is lacking on this one. Sounds good but you forget it fast, kind of like a big production movie with great special effects, it looks good but it is forgotten fast. No one will be disappointed with this album if they buy it but at the same time I doubt anyone will be excited.

Kind of a middle of the road album and what I feared that they would do after I heard the debut, they need to be more daring and think a bit more outside the box if they want to remain a relevant band. The Puzzle is a pretty good album but after hearing the debut I can’t help but thinking that it should have been much better.

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