E.P. Review: Love Is Red - Darkness Is Waiting
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
Darkness is Waiting is Love Is Red’s first release since 2004’s The Hardest Fight and those intervening seventeen years saw the band relocate from their native Alabama to Tennessee only to disband in 2005.
A Brief reunion led to a final show in Nashville in 2010, and that seemed like it; until Furnace Festival came a-knocking a decade later to see whether the band would be interested in playing the festival once again.
Spoiler alert: Furnace Fest 2020 was postponed, so Love Is Red decided to use the downtime to crack on with writing some new music and were able to record and produce the E.P. remotely.
If there was any ring-rust before Love Is Red reconvened then it is shaken off in the first few bars of the title track; an enticing opening piece builds across two minutes, establishing the tone of Darkness is Waiting and serving as a middle-finger to the doubters. By the end, you are left salivating by the promise of things to come and, finally, Keep Moving is unleashed. A driving beat and a powerful rhythm, it feels like a band desperate to make up for lost time. A barrage of ire and rage, exorcised in the musical savagery of Terror and Hatebreed. Choppy riffs and gang vocals suddenly take on an unexpectedly epic scale.
Rather than a collection of five songs, Darkness is Waiting has the feel of a single piece in five movements as all the tracks lead seamlessly into the next. A Different Path picks up the mantle and insidiously switches to edgy, angular rhythms, a fat guitar sound producing muscular riffs. So huge is the beatdown at its climax that, when played live do not be surprised if there are UN inspectors assessing the genocidal carnage it will create.
Those discordant rhythms continue through Shallow Graves, a more measured, though no less devastating piece. And, way too soon, So Long shows up with its pedal to the metal attitude and menacing stomp, to bring it all to a close.
Though short, Darkness is Waiting feels perfectly formed, with every track delivering a killing blow through distorted guitars, relentless percussion and angry vocals. Love Is Red have managed to write an E.P. that retains much of their early sound without appearing as their own tribute act, while at the same time the development sounds perfectly natural.
When the world opens up again and Love Is Red get to tread the Furnace Festival boards, those paying punters will not know what has just hit them. Lucky sods!
