Dare - Sacred Ground

Published July 14 2016

*=Staff's pick	Home I'll Hear You Pray Strength Every Time We Say Goodbye Days Of Summer* On My Own Until All Our Brass Was Gold You Carried Me Like The First Time* Along The Heather*

Genre	Melodic Rock/AOR	Darren Wharton	Vocals
Tracks	11	Vinny Burns	Guitar
Running time	47 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Legend Records	Nigel Clutterbuck	Bass
Release	July 15, 2016	Kevin Whitehead	Drums
Country	England	Darren Wharton	Keyboard
Producer	---
Similar artists	---

Dare of 2016 shows melodic rock, or AOR, whichever you prefer, that includes some elements of domestic folk music. The songs flourish occasionally and some of them are quite intriguing, but still a large part of the album's material comes out pretty bland to my ears, since it doesn't have the capacity, strength or kick-ass feeling to entice me to listen really intensively.

Darren Wharton's voice is still working great and the overall performance is rather neat and pretty much what you could expect from a quite experienced unit like Dare. The music is mostly relaxed and it seems like complexity isn't really something they strive for.

I know for sure that this type of lighter music doesn't always contain what is needed to meet my own requirements as a metal oriented listener, but when I decided to listen to this record and give it a shot, I was kind of thinking "Good music is good music, no matter what genre it fits in." and since I remember that I really dug the 1991 album Blood From Stone in particular, I also wanted to check out what Dare would be able to create today.

Things aren't what they used to be of course and the same goes for this new record as it's unable to challenge the older stuff. However, I honestly think that Sacred Ground doesn't suck at all, but, as sort of previously mentioned, its content simply can't bring me any real joy and entertainment personally.