I’ve been a huge fan of Washington D.C. thrashers Darkest Hour since their rib-crushing 2003 opus ‘Hidden Hands Of A Sadist Nation’. Or at least I was a huge fan, until the band released their confounding 2014 self-titled album, on which they seemed to abandon much of what I’d fallen in love with to begin with. Gone was their signature brand of hardcore-informed melodic death metal, instead replaced with an ill-advised attempt at jumping on the ‘djent’ bandwagon, 7-string guitars and all. It was a gut-punch from a band I’d always been able to rely on (OK, maybe ‘The Human Romance’ wasn’t that great either, but that’s neither here nor there), and I couldn’t see how Darkest Hour could pull themselves back from the brink of stink-metal oblivion.

Turns out, all they needed to do was spend a couple of years reminding themselves who they really are, helped along nicely by their decision to spend much of 2015 and some of 2016 playing their 2005 thrashterpiece ‘Undoing Ruin’ live in its entirety. Oh, and also call master producer Kurt Ballou up to the plate to record their new album, ‘Godless Prophets & The Migrant Flora’. And what a difference those 3 years have made. This is arguably the finest work Darkest Hour have put out since ‘Undoing Ruin’, though rather than a step backwards towards their older sound, this is instead a quantum leap forward. It’s as thrashy as anything they’ve ever released, but with a progressive edge the band have only ever flirted with in the past dragged to the forefront. It also largely eschews the clean singing frontman John Henry has been employing on the band’s more recent records, his vocals here as vicious and imposing as they’ve ever been. ‘Godless Prophets…’ isn’t just a return to form for Darkest hour – this sounds like the start of an entirely new chapter for them, and with my hope restored I’m once more happy to heed their prophecies.