This Will Outlive Us
The Making of Darkest Hour’s Undoing Ruin

Recorded outside of a Judas Priest and Dokken show at the Capital Centre in Landover, MD on May 31, 1986, an energetic young man wearing a sleeveless zebra-print body suit would loudly and proudly proclaim into a microphone, “Heavy metal rules, all that punk shit sucks. It doesn’t belong in this world. It belongs on fucking Mars, man!” That spur-of-the-moment declaration became burned into the consciousness of the metal community via the cult classic documentary Heavy Metal Parking Lot, and that person—colloquially referred to as “Zebraman,” real name David Wine—would become one of its unwitting stars. Zebraman’s documented rant, forever saved to film, would live on as a humorous symbol of what happens when youthful passion is mixed with an equal dose of willful ignorance.

Perhaps no one quite like melodic death metal outfit Darkest Hour knows that those ironclad-yet-arbitrary walls are anything but dismantled. Formed in 1995 while the group’s sole remaining founding members, guitarist Mike Schleibaum and vocalist John Henry, were still teenagers, Darkest Hour started out as a metallic hardcore band in the vein of hybrid acts like Earth Crisis, Integrity and Deadguy. Following their debut full-length The Mark of the Judas in 2000, Victory Records—the hardcore label of their heroes—offered them a five-album deal that unknowingly shaped their career for years to come.

By 2004, after extensive touring in support of 2003’s well-received Hidden Hands of a Sadist Nation, Schleibaum and Henry, along with drummer Ryan Parrish, lead guitarist Kris Norris and bassist Paul Burnette, were due for their third LP under the Victory banner. Norris, now on his second record with the band, flexed his superhuman soloing abilities and helped progress the quintet’s songwriting as a whole to the next level. The “core” elements of their sound effectively evaporated, and their transformation into a full-blown melodeath killing machine was complete, armed with their strongest material to date. Backed by the guidance of new producer and previous Decibel Hall of Fame inductee Devin Townsend, strong financial backing from their label and an insatiable hunger for the road, Undoing Ruin was sure to be a success.

Well, yes and no. The group’s fourth album would see their highest sales ever, earning them a spot on Billboard’s Top 200 list as well as headlining opportunities in (slightly) larger clubs. Preconceptions and gatekeeping, however, left Darkest Hour a house without a home. Awkwardly grouped with a growing number of standouts in the scene, the band was branded as part of the loosely defined subgenre of “metalcore.” Already too metal for hardcore, their distinctly mid-aughts appearance, ties to Victory Records (and its comically misguided promotional campaign) and the mindless assumption of being an At the Gates rip-off made them pariahs in the eyes of “true” metalheads, with many opting to ignore the record entirely. With such scrutiny, they may as well have been on Mars. We’re now two decades removed from the release of one of the greatest examples of American melodic death metal. Ahead of its full-album performance at April’s Metal & Beer Fest in Philadelphia, the story of Undoing Ruin is long overdue for Decibel’s hallowed halls. Leave your zebra-print bodysuits at the door.

Need more classic Darkest Hour? To read the entire seven-page story, featuring interviews with the members who performed on Undoing Ruin, purchase the print issue from our store, or digitally via our app for iPhone/iPad or Android.

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