After a rough start to the 2020s, it looks like heavy music is finding its way back into the mainstream market once more, and it’s undoubtedly thanks to the efforts of an underground surging with talent right now. Although Darren Michael Boyd is very much an outsider to the establishment, his instrumental brand of hard rock has become a critics’ favorite in recent years, with his latest album Thoughts & Scares generating a lot of buzz well before its official release date this winter. Boyd doesn’t waste time reminding us why he’s won so much credibility over the years here, and from my perspective, he raises the bar for himself moving forward.
URL: https://www.darrenboyd.com/
Tension is one of the most important components of the music in Thoughts & Scares, and I would even go so far as to say that its presence in “Slow Dancing with Death” and the title track is essentially what makes these two songs work as well as they do. There’s a pressure between the instruments that lives up to the lofty expectations implied by this album’s title, but we’re not overcome with doom even in moments where it would have made sense to go even darker – such as the prolific “Abusement Park.”
You don’t need the assistance of lyrical content to understand what Boyd is putting on the line for us in a song like “Kickintheballs” or even “Misty Mundae,” as his dexterous style is more than capable of giving us some insight into his mind without having to rely on clear verses to contextualize the mood. Instrumental music is so much more complicated than its counterpart in more ways than one, and when it comes to communicating with an audience, it offers us a closer look at the artist behind the melodies than what words can typically afford. This is a guy who knows what he wants to say, and better yet, how to say it without even speaking.
Texture is present everywhere we listen in this mix, but it doesn’t come from the friction between the strings alone; the drums, the grit in the bassline on its own, and even the flow of the rhythm all of the instruments form when they’re cooking together is physical and imposing in all the right ways, and if it’s this strong coming out of a pair of headphones, I’ve got to see what the live show must sound like for myself.
APPLE MUSIC: https://music.apple.com/us/album/thoughts-scares/1649622446
I was impressed with the content I had heard from Darren Michael Boyd in the past, but with this new entry in his discography, I think he’s going to get even more attention from critics and audiences that might have been too quick to dismiss his strain of hard rock before. Thoughts & Scares is an introspective album that makes no apologies for its overindulgence, and while it’s not going to please everyone as much as it will the rock faithful – who have survived a lot of nonsense in the past decade alone – it’s certainly going to go down as one of the best records out of the underground this month.
Chadwick Easton