Some bands don’t find the audience they deserve. Darkane managed to impress me as a teenager with their fairly unique blend of modern thrash metal, melodic death metal and distinct classical influences, but it felt like legions of copy-pasted Swedish melodeath bands were running away with their audience. That may be why the wait for a new album took no less than nine years, but here it is in the shape of ‘Inhuman Spirits’. The sound of ‘Inhuman Spirits’ is slightly more streamlined than their early work, but still instantly recognizable as Darkane. Not unlike ‘The Sinister Supremacy’ before it, but better overall.

What always intrigued me about Darkane’s sound is how the Swedes brought old and new together. The heavy riffs courtesy of Christofer Malmström and Klas Ideberg would not have sounded out of place on one of Machine Head’s better albums, but they mix those riffs up with tasteful melodies and harmonies. Those harmonies evoke the classic heavy metal spirit, but their broad sound give them a truly unique, almost cinematic flavor. There are slightly fewer complex, technical sections than there were on the likes of 2001’s ‘Insanity’, but that has ultimately benefited the memorability of the songs.

One of the biggest advantages of that approach is that each song on ‘Inhuman Spirits’ has a strong character of its own. Every song has at the very least an intro riff and a chorus that will cement itself into the listeners’ memories. While I personally have a slight preference for the thrashy approach of the likes of ‘Embrace The Flames’, ‘The Great Deceiver’ and the incredible ‘Mansion Of Torture’, literally every other track is worth hearing. ‘The Quintessence Of Evil’ is a midtempo monster that serves as an excellent change of pace, while ‘A Spiral To Nothing’ almost feels like traditional heavy metal on steroids until its crushing pre-chorus sets in.

A key characteristic to Darkane’s sound that thankfully is still there is the interaction between Malmström’s fusion-inspired guitar solos and Ideberg’s more traditionally melodic ones. This always made Darkane stand out in a field of melodeath bands with two nearly indistinguishable lead guitarists. In addition, it is great to hear that those nine years have done nothing to diminish Peter Wildoer’s qualities. He is still my favorite drummer of all time. Lawrence Mackrory is the most versatile singer the band has ever had and while Jörgen Löfberg is not the most audible bassist in the genre, listening to ‘Inhuman Spirits’ on good equipment shows just how important he is to the bottom end from a sonic perspective.

Comebacks usually come in two flavors: the triumphant return or the massive disappointment. Maybe it’s because Darkane never stopped playing in the meantime, but in a way, ‘Inhuman Spirits’ is neither. It could have come out fifteen years ago and it would be classified as another great Darkane album. That is not the criticism it may seem, as ‘Inhuman Spirits’ is significantly better than its two predecessors and “more Darkane” is exactly what the album needed to be. A bit more direct than the likes of ‘Expanding Senses’ and ‘Layers Of Lies’, but the same core sound that intrigued me twenty years ago and is far more unique than it often gets credit for.

Recommended tracks: ‘Mansion Of Torture’, ‘The Quintessence Of Evil’, ‘A Spiral To Nothing’