Stream of Passion’s sound certainly appears as a melodic stream of unrelenting passion. Within their first album, Embrace the Storm, the band used the division between symphonic sound and a droning rock beat to present the clash between our interior and exterior worlds. Songs like "Out in the Real World," represented the highest peak of intensity as the vocalist seemed to come to grips with the menace of her grim reality.

Then, in The Flame Within, the vocalist seems to be bracing herself for the intensity of her reality. She needed to overcome her self-doubt within the first album in order to allow the love she has for someone to be fully expressed. Throughout that album, her instinctual doubt about the authenticity of the love she has becomes legitimized. Finally in "All I Know," she tries to regain her sense of identity that has been lost within a sorely disappointing relationship.

Now, "Darker Days" details the process of surviving the disillusioning aftermath of her lost relationship. Yet, the character within the music also pines after that lost, impossible love. Immediately, Lost reprises the disorientation of "All I Know." Expertly, the band allows the music to quietly lull us into the sound. Soon enough, the song begins to sound like a lament for a lost love. Marcela Bovio’s strong vocals allow her to effectively evoke the mixed feelings of betrayal, anger, and sadness. Underlying this, the band allows the instrumentals to intensify the emotions in a theatrical way.

Symphonic metal has been one of my favorite genres because I crave the dramatic intensity of emotion. More often than not, symphonic metal bands create a more uninspired sound which merely emulates the predominant sound in the market. This scenario reoccurs in all other areas of art.

But as usual, there are always exemplar examples of bands that dodge this temptation and rely mainly on their artistic desires to drive them. Stream of Passion always succeeds in broadening the creative potential of symphonic metal. Their sound seems to find its own niche within an overcrowded market of Nightwish imitators.

With their last two albums, the main problem that depreciated the quality of their sound was overstimulation. Sometimes the theatrics present within the sound became too overwrought and left the listener feeling overwhelmed by the sound. "The Flame Within," fixed that problem to some extent by creating a sound that had more focus than many of the tracks on "Embrace the Storm."

Occasionally, the songs within Darker Days find themselves following the same template that the other songs have. For example, the songs "Closer," and "This Moment" felt identical in sound. They both relied upon a sound that abruptly reached a crescendo then the sound slowly diminished. For Closer, this technique allows the listener to feel the precariousness of forbidden love. "This Moment," perhaps reuses the same technique because that same feeling of unabated worry and guilt becomes manifest in both songs.

Impressively, the band writes songs that pay homage to literary works like The Scarlet Letter and The Picture of Dorian Gray. Within The Scarlet Mark, the song that was inspired by The Scarlet Letter, the sound describes a mournful love that remains unexpressed because it is considered taboo. Marcela’s voice expresses her anger towards a world that does not allow their love to be fully exhibited. Instead, she must dwell within the world where the lovers must live on the fringes of polite society and reveal themselves in secret.

"The Mirror," inspired by "The Picture of Dorian Grey," plumbs the darkness of the human psyche to discover the alter-ego that wrecks havoc on one’s psyche. In many ways, the abject state of one’s psyche can be a restrictive force like society when it comes to love. The song purposely utilizes out-of tune notes to portray the person’s detachedness as they struggle for their liberation from dark alter-ego that threatens to redefine them.

Nearly all the songs artfully counteract one another or provide a dramatic tension between the external world and internal world. Stream of Passion has again reused that illustration again for this album to strongly emphasize the drama of forbidden romance. Marcela Bovio’s voice unexpectedly improved within this album or her wide vocal range is fully realized in this album.

Where the last two albums faltered, this album continues to rectify some of the problems of a sound that occasionally is too overblown. Oftentimes, that problem emerges again in some songs like "Collide," and "Spark." Furthermore, some of the songs are not distinct enough because they utilize the same formula as some of other songs. But, this problem occurs less frequently than in their last two albums.

While I would not describe this album as earth-shattering or the greatest of the year, I really do believe that it is a well-produced album. Stream of Passion definitely differentiates their sound from many other symphonic metal bands and focuses on creating a rich, bombastic sound which demands people to handle their music seriously. More albums like this one help to debunk the myth that metal music is a discordant mess of aimless notes. Stream of Passion certainly needs to continue to work on individualizing their songs more. Even so, it proves that symphonic metal is a lustrous and poetic art form where the scrupulous listener will continually find new meaning.

Best songs: The Mirror, The Scarlet Mark, and Lost

Recommended to fans of Epica, Tarja Turunen, Within Temptation, and Nightwish

Rating: 8.5 / 10