Band:	Zero Hour
Album:	Dark Deceiver
Style:	Progressive metal
Release date:	April 29, 2008
Guest review by:	Kap'N Korrupt

01. Power To Believe
02. Dark Deceiver
03. Inner Spirit
04. Resurrection
05. Tendonitis
06. The Temple Within
07. Lies
08. The Passion Of Words
09. Severed Angel

Zero Hour returns with an intense wall of sound entitled Dark Deceiver. Current vocalist Chris Salinas wails out the name of the album in the title track, equipped with some tremolo (i.e.; like being underwater) along with some added harmonics of his voice dubbed over a bunch of times.

There is one word to sum up this album: hysterical. Many Zero Hour fans are still unsure what to think of the band after the absence of Erik Rosvold in 2004. There are two ways of looking at Zero Hour; the band with Erik and the band without Erik. Zero Hour lost a lot of their melodic progressive qualities after the loss of keyboards. Their last three releases have been a solid wall of out of control down tuned tech metal histrionics. Salinas wails incoherently often throughout Dark Deceiver while the wall of off time crunching pulsates through your brain.

All of what was mentioned is not a bad thing. The songs are structured quite cleverly. The riffs on the album punch a hole through your head, making them quite memorable. It's a full head on attack to the senses. The three players are so tight and create compositions that work so well in a three piece setting. Tipton's bass playing is a whole different category: the things this guy can do with a bass! The guitarist/bassist Tipton brothers come up with some smart pieces of work. Jason flies over Troy's quick bass scaling with various clean guitar effects. Troy's "Tendonitis" piece in the middle of the album - basically, a solo spot featuring some of the bass riffs on other songs in the album, just by themselves - highlights just how hard it is to play what he plays. Dark Deceiver is hard to stop listening to. I highly recommend this one.