Author: Zsolt Némethy

In case you haven’t seen it on my Instagram or Facebook: I really felt honored by the post of Metal Has No Borders, an excellent website posting metal music from all around the world. They nominated three amazing albums (the recent releases of Sheperds Reign, a folk metal band from New Zealand, Crypta, a Brazilian death-thrash formation, and Cunabula, a Lithuanian post-metal band) as albums of the month (August, 2023). And the editors decided to list Thanatology among the honorable mentions! It’s such an honor to be in the company of such excellent metal bands!

Look, how they summarized the essence of Darkwave: “One-man project led by Zsolt Némethy, Darkwave is the zany hypothetical of if Dream Theater‘s John Petrucci was thrown into the arena of symphonic / experimental shred.”

I’m really speechless. Thank you so much, Metal Has No Borders!

The Italian AllaroundMetal wrote an excellent review on Thanatology. You can either check out the original (Italian) text here, or read the English translation below. Thank you AllaroundMetal for the kind words and encouragement!

Darkwave, instrumental metal not for everyone

“Get comfortable and of the right disposition of spirit, shut out the world from yourself, turn off the lights and let the tide of notes of “Thanatology” – the third album by the Hungarian project called Darkwave – wash over you. Behind the nick name is the guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Zsolt Némethy who started in 2021 with the full-length “Hexapla,” moving on the following year to the second album “Missa Innominata” – all self-produced (like this new record), unfortunately available only in digital versions, and unfortunately unknown to us. Némethy’s music is extremely peculiar, a kind of progressive with a few moments close to thrash, but also with countless references to other musical genres (from neoclassical, to fusion, passing even through some touches of Venetian rondo!), all entirely instrumental; it is as if Mekong Delta (I think the Hungarian musician’s main influence) met Cynic, Voivod and Anacrusis, resulting in a highly alienating, but extremely peculiar and definitely original music. The whole thing, as you may have guessed, is by no means easy-listening, primarily because instrumental metal normally is not, but also and especially because this kind of prog is anything but easy to understand and approach. That’s why at the beginning of the review I recommended you to be in the right state of mind, otherwise it’s easy for this music to blow our brains out because of its complexity and particularity. Certainly, to play in this way, one must have an uncommon technique, but technique alone is not enough because one must also know how to “compose,” one must always have the “song-structure” well in mind – and sometimes the good Némethy lets himself go, probably because of his desire to overdo it. The songwriting, in fact, could be improved and above all be more concise and effective: it is not by chance that the best song (“Legacy of the Worthless”) is also the shortest. Nevertheless, “Thanatology” is a record of remarkable quality, in which the lack of a singer is not even felt (the guitar takes care of it!). The Darkwave project would deserve much more attention, because at this level there are few, very few bands around the world!”