Album Review: Shining Black - Shining Black

Despite having been around for a long time, my only real exposure to Mark Boals as a singer comes from the album he made with Magnus Karlsson under the name of The Codex. That album was good, and Boals was a more than capable singer, but for whatever reason I never felt the need to seek out any of his other work to see what I was missing. So when I saw his name pop up as being in this new project, I figured the time was right to give him another shot. For this album, he is joined by Olaf Thorsen of Labyrinth and Vision Divine as his songwriting partner. Let's see what that means for the record.

The music of Shining Black sits on the balance of hard rock and metal, where I can hear elements of both sides coming into play. Honestly, I wish they would have picked one or the other, because some of the hard rock instrumentation doesn't mesh so well with the power metal vocal melodies. "My Life" was chosen as a single, but it doesn't work for me. The music getting through the verses is fine, but that chorus doesn't have the bounce or flair a rock song needs. It's a power metal hook, but without enough instrumental 'oomph' to propel the melody.

"A Sad Song" and the title track (Can we say that naming a song, album, and band the same thing is lazy?) are far better, where Boals' melodies have movement and bite to them. Those are the songs that are most focused as rock songs, and that approach works out for the best. When they rely on Boals stretching his voice, which also stretches the notes in the melody, the songs aren't as appealing. They aren't bad, but they sound like everything else, and aren't so well done they stand out from the pack.

Several of the songs feature hooks that are very similar, and completely standard. Power metal isn't known for innovation, and the more of that sound finding its way into these songs, the more they grow stale because of it. Boals sounds great, and the record is more than competently played and put together, but it's never exciting. Even when it's done to perfection, there are so many albums that follow this exact blueprint I can't say it would ever be exciting. This isn't that album, though.

Shining Black is yet another one of these project bands that has a few good songs, but not enough of an identity to make me believe they have a future ahead of them. They sound like a dozen other of these groups, and frankly, their songs aren't enough to set them apart. This is a record that is fine, enjoyable enough, but ultimately forgettable.