Although a brand-new entity, DARKENED host a wealth of experience in the death metal underground, comprising drummer Andy Whale (ex-Bolt Thrower / Memoriam), bassist Daryl Kahan (Citizens Arrest / Funebrarum), vocalist Gord Olson (Ye Goat-Herd Gods / Demisery), and guitarists Linus Nirbrant (A Canorous Quintet / This Ending) and Hempa Brynolfsson (Excruciate / Ordo Inferus). As such, the band’s opening salvo is truly a sum of all its not-inconsiderable parts. Short but most definitely sweet, the four-song/16-minute Into the Blackness is all-caps DEATH METAL of a cool and cruising and above all CRUSHING aspect. Imagine the stately, steely pulse of later Bolt Thrower or the subsequent Memoriam, a smattering of gutted doom ala Disma or spiritual kin Funebrarum, and 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 have the sum total charm of DARKENED. However, the strength of this unit is their songwriting, and Into the Blackness possesses such in spades – and they’re only beginning.

1. Into the Blackness
2. The Offering
3. Darkening of My Soul
4. Unredeemed