Just like ninety(ish) percent of any albums that fit under the prog or power metal label, Hollow Haze's fourth LP Poison in Black opens with an orchestral intro that aims at Hans Zimmer-like bombast. Things don't ever end up as epic opening two minutes do, but rather surprisingly the group don't give in to as many clichés inherent to the aforementioned genres as one might expect. Power metal is a genre that makes it easy for musicians to go for recycled tricks and tropes (constant guitar shredding, operatic falsettos, and, worst of all, lots of lyrics about dragons), but Hollow Haze wisely stick to what I like to call "The Badass Factor:" make your music sound as imposingly heavy as possible, all the time. (Even "Pray for You," a song whose title suggests a string-drenched power ballad, is all about rocking out.) If this Factor sounds like it lends itself to a monochromatic sound palette, it does, but it's significantly better than living through something deeply generic. There's nothing stellar about Poison in Black, but given how much worse a project like this could have been, one has to give the band props for rising above the oversaturated mass.
Track Listing
1. Rise Above (Intro)
2. Tears of Pain
3. Never Turn Back
4. Haunting the Sinner
5. Lords of World
6. Hit in Time
7. Chained
8. Pray for You
9. Remorse
10. Voodoo Rites
11. Snowblind
12. Headless Cross
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