If I'm not mistaken, this must be Dark Age's 6th full album. This German band with ex-members of Holy Moses and Stormwarrior started all the way back in 1994 as Dyer's Eve. A year later they changed their name into Dark Age. The band, or the record company claims that the band can be put in the melodic death metal genre, but the term death metal is a little excessive.

O.k., there are harsh and aggressive kind of grunting vocals in the songs, but also a lot of clean parts with serene melodic music. The term modern metal with influences out of the death, melodic and even the power metal genre is more like what they serve; links to Dark Tranquillity, Darkane and In Flames can easily be found. First song "Kingdom Nevercome" starts a little tame; a nice song, but not very special. It is getting really interesting with "Neon Gardens" and "Snake of June", these songs have nice arrangements and the changes between soft and heavy parts are in balance. "Zeitgeist" is a little too modern sounding to me, not that it is bad, but the riff used, sounds a bit like Rammstein. I get the idea that the album is getting a little softer towards the end, more clean and easy parts and less heavy ones, but that can be just my interpretation.

In general this isn't a bad album, but it isn't outstanding either. You can hear that these Germans know how to make good music, but they sound a bit too much like other genre mates. Although I must confess that the clean singing part in "Underneath these Burdens" sounds very good. Fans of In Flames, Dark Tranquillity, Darkane and Soilwork will however have a nice album to listen to this month if they pick this one up.