Reviews list for Black Mages, The - The Black Mages III - Darkness and Starlight (2008)

The Black Mages is an instrumental progressive metal band formed by Japanese composer Nobuo Uematsu, renowned for his work on the Final Fantasy video games. While I’ve never actually played the games, I can appreciate video game music, and consider the Black Mages’ first album an absolute masterpiece. Their second album was a very strong follow-up, and so it’s unfortunate that their third album falls a bit flat.

Released in 2008, Uematsu and his motley crew had 21 years of video game lineage to take inspiration from, but with their third release, ‘Darkness and Starlight’, I think it just goes to show that what works as background music in a video game doesn’t necessarily work as a metal song.

And it’s a shame, because in theory, this isn’t much different than the previous two albums, except the magic just isn’t there anymore. The excitement and energy that made the first album so fantastic seems missing, like they’re just going through the motions now.

The playing and production, as always, is exceptional, and there’s a few highlights, including ‘Opening: Bombing Mission’, ‘Neo Exdeath’, ‘Distant Worlds’, ‘Assault On the Silver Dragon’ and closing track ‘Life (in Memory of Keiten)’, but in all honesty, these songs are still fairly passable, and I’d much rather just listen to either of the previous two records. In addition, the only vocals on this album feature in the title track, a 15-minute Japanese prog metal opera, which, I might add, is one of the most horrendously boring and long-winded songs I think I’ve ever heard.

Overall, this isn’t a terrible album, but I really think at this point the band has used up all the best ideas from the franchise, and since they called it a day shortly after, I think they knew that too.