The part where he goes for the really deep vocals is sort of like Sentenced and Amorphis when they first abandoned their death metal styles in favour of clean singing - this is easily the greatest vocal performance I've heard all year.ĭag Swano's guitar playing takes these songs on a completely new level. Though this song was written by drummer Tom Bjorn, you can still catch Dan's progressive side in the mix of the keyboards and his more aggressive, somewhat Odyssey-like vocal style. Similarly, "Hideaway", the most progressive tune, sees Dan beginning with sinister low whispers in the intro and then moving to a gripping chorus whilst repeating his classic Moontower keyboards for cohesion. The chorus to this song is awe-inspiring, and the very end where Dan goes for the throaty Jorn Lande-like singing is something we've never heard from him before. The former is one of the darkest songs on the CD, and features an addictive guitar melody that recalls Mike Oldfield's earlier body of work. Nowadays, Dan still uses the same light/dark contrast, which particularly becomes noticeable on "One Way Ticket" and "Hideaway". When he was in Edge of Sanity alternating between guttural death growls and silky clean passages, pretty much every metalhead admired him for his versatility. This song feels like the perfect combination of the chorus-driven Alive Again and the more progressive dark rock of The Closing Chronicles, perhaps Dan's finest Nightingale album.ĭan Swano opts for some of his most diverse vocal expressions on this album in years. For instance, "Trial and Error" is a successful experiment in that it weaves the classic clean-toned acoustic bits with Dan Swano's impossibly powerful vocals, adding in a cool Rush-like middle part and a terrific lead guitar solo towards the end. Most of these songs feature elements Dag Swano wrote in the early 80's, inspired from a variety of bands. Interestingly enough, his brother Dag Swano co-wrote pretty much every song on the album, bringing in riffs and melodies from way back. It still possesses the same hard-rocking melodic quality of its two predecessors, Invisible and Alive Again (they also released a cool 10th year anniversary album in between), but this album also sees Dan Swano going back to his more prog rock roots he displayed on The Closing Chronicles and I, with a good deal of dark melodies, brilliant production, and his best vocal performance to date. White Darkness is arguably the best Nightingale album after Dan Swano decided to turn it into a real band, following the release of I in 2000.
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