Band:	Spirit Adrift
Album:	Divided By Darkness
Style:	Heavy metal
Release date:	May 10, 2019
A review by:	nikarg

01. We Will Not Die
02. Divided By Darkness
03. Born Into Fire
04. Angel & Abyss
05. Tortured By Time
06. Hear Her
07. Living Light
08. The Way Of Return

So Spirit Adrift abandoned much of their doom sound in their third album, Divided By Darkness. Was it worth it though?

Spirit Adrift is the more traditional metal child of Nate Garrett (also of Gatecreeper fame), and in this album his love for the classics is more evident than anything he's done before. Apart from his voice, which is a mixture of early James Hetfield and Ozzy (even with some Tobias Forge thrown in for good measure), it's the riffs in Divided By Darkness that mirror the stuff that got most metalheads into metal in the first place.

The song that proves this point more aptly is "Angel & Abyss", with its "Fade To Black"-ish introduction that subsequently goes all "Bark At The Moon" at you, while the guitar work has Randy Rhoads written all over and the song even features Ozzy's trademark maniacal laughter in the end. Elsewhere, the lead guitar melody of "Born Into Fire" reminisces "For Whom The Bell Tolls" and the first single, "Hear Her", crushes with heaviness borrowed from "Harvester Of Sorrow". And it's not that you hadn't been warned about the throwback nature of Divided By Darkness from the very beginning, since the drum intro of the opener "We Will Not Die" clearly invokes Judas Priest's "Hell Patrol".

But the album is not all classic heavy metal with hefty doses of Metallica. The doom aspect of the band is not entirely absent and you can still find the sound that Spirit Adrift and their contemporaries Khemmis have in common, either in the form of complete songs, such as the title track or "Tortured By Time", or in the presence of a dark atmosphere that shrouds the entire album. The fuzzy guitars and the weighty riffs will appeal to doom lovers as well as those who can't stand all this trad metal rage of late. Much attention should be paid to the prog rock/psychedelic-influenced instrumental closer, "The Way Of Return", which only showcases how good Spirit Adrift are in composing music.

Divided By Darkness does not try to hide where it came from; instead, it wholeheartedly embraces its roots and puts them right at the forefront for everyone to notice. I admit that initially it bothered me to hear riffs and melodies and drum patterns that rightfully belong to the pantheon of metal classics in an album that is supposed to be 'new'. I am not sure where the line is drawn between 'paying homage' and 'rip-off', but I do know that I absolutely love [url= https://spiritadrift.bandcamp.com/album/divided-by-darkness]this record[/url] and it's been featured heavily in my rotation since its release.

"Learn to be unborn
Dying to transform"