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For whatever reason, I didn't really attach to Cirith Ungol's comeback album Forever Black a few years ago. I don't make it a big secret that I think King of the Dead is the definitive Cirith Ungol album, and their other works are much more hit-or-miss. Frost & Fire is too much rock and not enough metal, One Foot in Hell doesn't have enough of the doom sound I want, and Paradise Lost is just too uneven to get into.

All that aside, all comeback albums by old bands should be this good. Dark Parade legit sounds like it was written 40 years ago, with the grooving riffs, doomy atmosphere, and that acid rock flavoring to the leads so the whole thing sounds like it crawled out of the '70s last week. I don't think there are any tracks to match "Black Machine" or "Finger of Scorn," but songs like "Sailor on the Seas of Fate" are almost as good. The album does lose some momentum as it goes on, and the second half is just less memorable than the first. There's more polish than the band had in the old days, and that does remove some of the weird edge they used to have, but really that they can still make an album this good is a tremendous accomplishment.