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Darkest Hour (band)

American metal band

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 18, 2026
Entity authorityQ1166257 ↗
Source-derived summary

Darkest Hour is an American heavy metal band from Washington, D.C., formed in 1995. Though failing to break through early in their tenure, the band has received acclaim for their albums Undoing Ruin, Deliver Us, and The Eternal Return. Deliver Us debuted at number 110 on the Billboard album charts, with sales of 6,600, and their more recent effort, The Eternal Return, reached a higher position in the Billboard album charts at number 104. Their album Godless Prophets & the Migrant Flora charted at 42 on the Billboard 200, a peak for the band, and it marked a stylistic shift in the band's discography.

History

Formation (1995–1999)

Darkest Hour played their first show on September 23, 1995, and initially consisted of vocalist John Henry, guitarist Mike Schleibaum, drummer Matt Maben, and bassist Raul Mayorga.

The band released its first EP, The Misanthrope, in 1996 on the local label Death Truck Records. In 1996, Darkest Hour cut the single "Paths of Despair" for East Coast Empire Records' The Harder They Come compilation. The song has a slower, grueling tempo in comparison to the up-beat tempo the band would become known for. In 1999, Darkest Hour released another EP, The Prophecy Fulfilled, on the Art Monk Construction label.

The Mark of the Judas and So Sedated, So Secure (2000–2002)

With the addition of lead guitarist Fred Ziomek, bassist Billups Allen and drummer Ryan Parrish, the band released their first full-length LP, The Mark of the Judas, in 2000, on the now-defunct M.I.A. Records.

Editorial summary

“Darkest Hour (band)” enters the record as american metal band. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Darkest, Hour and band can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1995, 1999, 1996, 2000—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1995. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Darkest, Hour and band.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Darkest Hour (band)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Darkest, Hour and band provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1166257. VIAF identifies the subject as 139914567. The Library of Congress control number is no2005075720. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1995, 1999, 1996 and 2000.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Darkest Hour (band)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.