Short Reviews [Dark Beauty - 2021 - "Between Sixes and Sevens"]

Here we have the second album from Dark Beauty, with the second instalment telling the story of The Dark Angel, her fall from grace and hopeful redemption, portrayed by lead singer Liz Tapia. There have been a few changes in the line-up, and although we have return of guitarist Bryan Zeigler and drummer Dan Granda, this time around the band is completed by Katie Pachnos (keyboards and electric harp) and Clive Smith (bass). I was quite a fan of the debut album, ‘Fall From Grace’, and the way they mixed influences from the likes of Steeleye Span and Legend to create a vehicle for Liz’s classically trained vocals so I was really looking forward to hearing this one, but for some reason this does not gel as it should. It has been eight years since the debut, which was an hour long and contained 10 songs, but here we have just six and a playing time of 33 minutes, and one of those was released as a single back in 2016 so I am not sure why it has taken so long for this to become available. There are bits of this which are really good, some nice guitars here and there, lovely powerful drumming at the back, pleasant bass melodies, keyboards which add nice nuances, and of course Liz’s vocals, but when combined they somehow because less than the sum of the parts and I have no real idea why that is. I can’t help but wonder if it is due to the untimely death of original keyboard player Warren Helms, as the one song he was involved with, “Spirits of a Dead Earth”, feels much more complete and balanced. I do feel this is something of an opportunity missed, but I still hope they come back with the third and final part of the trilogy as I will be intrigued to hear that.