Artist to Watch: Clad in Darkness

Photo taken from Clad in Darkness's Metal-Archives Page. Bachelor's Grove, IL

Everyone has that local band that gets them going. You see them in basements, bars, backyards, and parties, always wondering why they aren't getting that little bit of notice that they deserve (Hell, the first time I saw these guys play was in a garage). Comprised of my dear friends Casey, Coy, John, Chris, and Brian, Clad in Darkness is a band that you shouldn't ignore.

Heartbreaking, soaring, enraged, surreal: there are so many words I could use to describe Clad in Darkness, and yet I know that no words could describe just what Clad in Darkness is to me. Every time I've had the pleasure of seeing this band play live, though none of them know this, I have been known to wipe at least a single tear from my eye during their set. Yes, I know I sound like some sort of raving fanboy here, but even if I didn't know these people, I would still follow them as avidly.

To compare Clad in Darkness to another band would be criminal, but, as I am a man of risk, imagine the shimmer of the most expansive post-rock, the intensity of the fastest and most provocative black metal, the obscurity and desperation of the most heartbroken doom metal, and the understanding between a group of men who, in this latest incarnation, have been working with each other for almost seven years.

Clad in Darkness has shared the stage with such fantastic acts as Katatonia, Novembers Doom, Alcest, Swallow the Sun, Altar of Plagues, Velnias, Seidr, and hopefully many more to come.

You can find Clad in Darkness's 2006 EP, "Amidst Her Shadows," on various internet blogs, but I'm just going to annoy them until they record their new material. So how 'bout it, boys?

-Jon

PS) Scroll down for videos from the Alcest show back in April.