“Darkness falls, and I can hear your screams.”
The line from Black Halo’s “Darkness Falls” sums up the topics of their debut album, Utopia, and the band’s own struggles to get it recorded. Hard rock bands are known for songs about fast cars and even faster women, but Black Halo is tackling the troubles of our modern world head-on instead. Deep fakes. Substance abuse. Hatemongers. Depression. Isolation. The thought-provoking concept album follows two similarly troubled people whose demons threaten their dreams.
And it’s not unlike the duo behind Black Halo. When Maryland-based guitarist Randy Ellefson decided in 2009 that his fifth solo album would be the first with vocals, he had no idea singers would delay it for over fifteen years. The singers came and went one-by-one, six of them over seven years, each forcing Ellefson to start the vocals over (the rest of the album was done). One was Atlanta’s Chase Breedlove, whose personal troubles prompted his exit. Finally, Ellefson gave up.
“I honestly couldn’t take it anymore and just retired,” says Ellefson, who went on to write epic fantasy novels instead. But the project was never really forgotten. Years passed before he decided to try again, and this time, Breedlove had recovered and returned to get Utopia done. Released under the band name Black Halo, it’s still mostly Ellefson’s affair, but it’s a second chance for both men – maybe the same second chance their audience and the album’s main character seek. For Ellefson and Breedlove, the darkness has fallen and now there’s only the scream of triumph.
