Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The hunt is on when one of the goddesses can be seen, when the daughter of Jupiter is virtuous but can never claim to have been tempted, then shall Diana rise and in her daylight it shall be thought of that the Stars Can’t Shine Without Darkness. 

The words might have been derived from a translation of Ovid by the late great Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, they might have shifted, taken on the form of a sonnet, a playful lesson in love and art, for the hunt is always on and for French Metalcore band Diana Rising, that hunt, that which to chase down the deeds of those who listen without raising an arrow of the stag of the music, who only wish to see it grow, see and hear it thrive, then this type of hunt is scintillating, it is passionate and it is overflowing with cerebral hardcore honesty.

To quote the Bard’s Portia in The Merchant of Venice, “I will die as chaste as Diana”, or put it another way we should all live in the same field of musical influence as Diana Rising, we should see the world for not what it can offer to us but perhaps how may influence and help the progress of others at the disservice to our own desires and supposed needs, for surely as Diana Rising point out, Stars Can’t Shine Without Darkness.

For Djé, Arnaud, Loïc, David and Pierre, the album is resplendent in its contrast between the darkness and light that is contained within us all, the fear, the hatred, the disillusionment, all hidden behind the smile of love, the expression of p[oetry and the guilt of the hunt, the drive to possess.

In tracks such as Piece By Piece, the tremendous allusion in Infinite Dimensions, The Void and Diamond Clouds, Diana Rising take hold of the empty darkness and give it a sense of beauty, of being able to cradle the quarry pursued and give it safe passage on its journey into other realms, other wars, other games where silver bows and arrows are weapons of myth and the music is played out with poetic metal charm.

Ian D. Hall