DARKENED – ‘Kingdom of Decay’ TAPE

At last, it arrives under the ominous title Kingdom of Decay. Everything on Kingdom of Decay is an intensification of that short-but-sweet debut EP: the riffs more patient but punishing, the doom darker and doled out more effectively, the songs more world-eating whilst effectively exploring a greater wealth of dynamics and, it must be said, atmosphere. Elsewhere, the winning formula of Into the Blackness remains largely unchanged – the stately, steely pulse of later Bolt Thrower or the subsequent Memoriam dusted with the classy melodicism of A Canorous Quintet and successors This Ending, but all done with a touch that’s somewhere between comfortably familiar and subtly unique – and you can now also add a touch of the tank-like onslaught of prime Grave, with everything given a gleaming CRUSH courtesy of the mixing by Tobbe Sillman (General Surgery) and mastered by the one and only Dan Swanö (Edge of Sanity) in the famous Unisound Studio in Sweden. This is what debut-album dreams are made of…or nightmares!