Darkane - The Sinister Supremacy (2013)

After a lukewarm 2008 effort with Jens Broman at the helm, I was kind of on the verge of writing off Darkane for good, so their decision to reacquire Lawrence Mackrory came as somewhat of a surprise, though they've always remained pretty tight, and even had him guest on albums after he'd left the group. This reunion obviously hinted at the possibility of the Swedes returning to their Rusted Angel roots. Having now digested The Sinister Supremacy a half dozen times, I think that's only marginally the case. His vocals and the overall setting and atmosphere of the record aren't quite so caustic and abrasive as the debut, but the punchy melodic  death/thrash and complicated impact of these cuts does play out like an admixture of Rusted Angel and Insanity with the clean mix of Demonic Art, but unfortunately not reaching that lofty songwriting perfection of Layers of Lies, hands down my fave of their efforts and among my favorites in all the Swedish exports of the 21st century.

It's still loaded, however, with the compact and forceful riffing progressions one would come to expect from their backlog, a violent and passionate vocal performance, and the bewildering level of musicianship that frankly has me stunned why Darkane is not held in wider regard. What I've long enjoyed about their music is how it can loosely cling to a standard rock or metal song structure but still deliver thrills through both its inherent complexity and rampant unpredictability. Unlike the lion's share of melodic death metal bands, once they start battering away at their instruments I often have no exact picture of what's coming next, and this holds true of The Sinister Supremacy. Rapid, rushed charged palm muting sequences are interspersed with dextrous grooves, gorgeous leads gleam through the driving rhythmic wasteland, and there's no end to the testosterone. This is a pretty substantial record, with 12 tracks and almost 50 minutes of material before the two bonus tracks, and something for just about any fan of the past works, or comparable acts like Carnal Forge or the first 3-4 albums of The Haunted, with the caveat that Darkane have always been more clinical, futuristic, and classically-inspired; as the intro "Sounds of Pre-Existence" and the piano/string interlude "Hate Repentance State" remind us.

To some extent, Mackrory is reliving his earlier years with the bands, the one difference being the added level of James Hetfield sneer of strained melody that he often breaks out in chorus sections, the perfect example coming right away with "The Sinister Supremacy" itself. Granted, he was meting out such lines as early as Rusted Angel, but with the further clarity of this record, it's much more pronounced, and took me some getting used to. Otherwise, the guy is snarling and growling with the celerity and fire associated with not only that first album, but also his predecessor Andreas Sydow, who in turn had carried the torch for him. Ideberg and Malmström remain fonts of ideas, patching together an aggressive, modern architecture that should sate fans of forward-thinking thrash, technical death, and even though the grooves don't quite carry that same blunt percussion of proper 'djent' bands, I feel like fans of melodic Meshuggah offspring might also really appreciate the level of concussion and finesse being contrasted here. Wildoer's drumming is, as usual, busily implemented and near perfect in its capacity to keep the music's frame compelling; and the bass guitars are pretty good, even if they often disappear into the murk below the rhythm guitar.

Not all of the songs really stuck to me, but there are a handful here which are shockingly awesome, in particular when they break out some mid-paced, mechanical riffs that remind me of the delicious dystopian landscape they have always conjured at their best. Cuts like "The Decline" and "By Darkness Designed" are brilliant amalgamations of Layers of Lies and Expanded Senses, thanks to their interesting note progressions and rhythmic diversity, but there are other spots like "Ostracized" or "Humanity Defined" where they simply tear your face off with more traditional, winding Swedish melodeath riffs redolent of a robotic, postmodern alternate universe At the Gates. Bluesy, evolved, rock & roll based grooves often break out amidst the busier, machine-like picking, and though it's quite consistent and often samey in construction, the album's brushstrokes are painted wide enough that it never suffers from monotony, unless of course you just really hate this style of harried, spastic future-thrash, in which case this is unlikely to change your opinion. Even the bonus tracks here are worth something, and in the end, even if it can't match Rusted Angel or Layers of Lies in scope or vision, and doesn't ultimately 'progress' into new territory, I'm still thoroughly enjoying it, riff after riff after bloody riff ad infinitum.

Verdict: Win [8/10] (and all senses disappear)

http://www.darkane.com/

Darkane - Demonic Art (2008)

“I feel I’ve reached a stand still in the creative process with Darkane and together we came to the decision to let fresh blood into the band for the upcoming fifth album. Darkane is constantly evolving and I'm sure that this ignition will be great for the band." Such was the official notice given by Andreas Sydow to the fans, on his departure. But I will posit that we all know the REAL reason Sydow stepped down: because there was no fucking way in hell the Swedes were ever going to write anything as good as Layers of Lies; and if Demonic Art is any indicator, then I must speak the truth! Well, it's not as if this was the shittiest followup possible, and there are a handful of exciting moments throughout, but for some reason the material here feels recycled, 'old hat' ideas that were taken out of the coat room just to maintain some stability in Darkane's continued existence.

The 'fresh blood' in this case was fellow scenester Jens Broman, who had appeared on a Construcdead album as well as in the supergroup The Defaced, which Darkane's guitar wizard Klas Ideberg. I dug his performance on that band's sophomore outing Karma in Black, which was a sort of hybrid of groove metal circa Machine Head or Pantera if given a kick injection by the local melodic Swedish death/thrash. He's actually a natural fit for the band, not only because of his prior association with the members, but by the fact that he can do slightly melodic hooks and gritty snarls, but I was quite shocked when I heard this that he was doing his best at a Sydow impersonation. Granted, Andreas himself was taking stylistic notes from the first album's vocalist, Lawrence Mackrory (who has now returned to the band), but here the gulf seems ever slighter. What I'm getting at, is that this is not really feeling like 'fresh blood' after all, but rather the same blood on the verge of congealing. He just doesn't add anything new to the sound, nor does he do such a manic and inspiring job as his predecessor, so Demonic Art's success is left up entirely to the rest of the band.

And they try. They really do. For every lumbering, vapid chugging groove in the foundation, they'll attempt some wavy guitar theatrics. Like Layers of Lies, the album isn't short on atmospheric segues like the synth intro to "Execution 44", or the warm, cozy acoustics and lead of the interlude "Wrong Grave". Much of the writing seems like a mash up of the prior two records, especially the slower Expanded Senses chugs, but this album is far more cleanly produced, and lacks some of that rumbling density. On the whole, it just fails to really convince anyone with its atmospheres, because they seem like uninteresting dressings for a series of thrashing riff progressions that are far from Darkane's best. And that is really why this album sits at the bottom of their barrel (without spilling out onto the floor): its comprised so largely of ideas from the first four, or Ideberg's other work in Terror 2000 or The Defaced. Which would be fine if the band could rifle out some emotionally charged, memorable chorus parts, or the infectious rhythm and lead guitars that thrust the last album into my playlist of perpetuity; but even at its most jerky or progressive, like "The Killing of I" or the warmer "Demigod", it falls short of leaving an impression...

Technically, this is no disservice to the futurist thrash the band had been exploring since the late 90s, but it feels like a step sideways and then in reverse. There's just nothing here like a "Secondary Effects", "Layers of Lies" or "Vision of Degradation" to get the blood flowing. The musicians all turn in dextrous and astute performances, and the cleaner production values (at least over Rusted Angel or Expanded Sense) mark it among their more accessible works, but it sort of reminds me of one of the 21st century Nevermore albums, in which there is such an intense, calculated effort that leads little quality emotional resonance to the songs. I don't really want to blame Broman, because he's doing what he can to fit into the band's history, but perhaps the Swedes might have tried something different and really evolved their sound...instead of half assing it. Demonic Art is sleek, professional, and busy enough to listen through a few times, but the well of compositions seemed to have dried up here. Best wait for another rainstorm before venturing out again.

Verdict: Indifference [6.5/10] (I might be limited in here)

http://www.darkane.com/

Darkane - Expanding Senses (2002)

2002 would bring about a reversion to a more atmospheric Darkane, which was both reminiscent of their Rusted Angel debut, and at the same, time, not exactly. This is a largely groove oriented disc which sees its ceaseless, muscular chugging embroidered with all manner of modern atmospherics like melodies, subtle orchestration, and it even goes as far as dabbling in some industrial machine noises. Expanded Senses was in a way symptomatic of the Swedish melodeath scene at large, in which all the major bands were attempting to strive towards modernity and stray from the formulas of the 90s. This same year, for instance, Soilwork and Dark Tranquillity hit what I'd consider to be their respective, creative summits (Natural Born Chaos and Damage Done), producing two of the finest works in this sub-genre, while In Flames was totally watering down its power-meets-death metal approach into something I could only describe as bouncy, pasteurized emo-death (Reroute to Remain)...

Compared to their more recognized countrymen, Expanded Senses was a slim evolution indeed, but it did swap some of the more acrobatic guitar work of its predecessors for thicker rhythm progressions over which Andreas Sydow's passionate vocals were better embedded than on Insanity. There are glaringly obvious throwbacks like "Violence from Within", in which the hasty, muted tremolo rhythm reeks of "July 1999" from the debut, while "Parasites of the Unexplained" might have fit snugly onto Insanity, but in general this is a lot of burgeoning, dense and simpler rhythm grooves like "Innocence Gone", "Imaginary Entity" or "Chaos vs. Order" (a personal favorite here). If you hate the overuse of the palm mute in your metal, then this is hardly an album to win you over, but to Darkane's great credit, even the most dumbed down material on this album is lent some texture by all the background happenings. Sydow's brash cleans bounce around in the mix like someone howling across a radar field, while Peter Wildoer lays down a foundation one could build a half dozen stories upon. It's very turbulent, bass-laden music which seeks to overpower the listener more than either of the earlier albums, but there's plenty enough subtlety if you're able to forgive its brickwalled crushing production and let it pummel the snot out of you.

It's certainly not all slower paced, and I'd actually estimate a good 50/50 split between its two polar tempo regions, but some of the best stuff here just lays you out with the combination of industrialized chugging and sampled symphonics. You can feel the down tuning of the guitars here so much more than the other albums, primarily because of their stalwart devotion to slugging you in the intestines and inducing a riot deep in your bowels. No acoustic choir present this time, though they do pull in Lawrence Mackrory to do a bit of a 'duet' with Sydow on "Chaos vs. Order". Always classy when a bands present and former members get along well enough to 'keep it in the family'. The leads throughout the disc serve only as impoverished hangers-on to the bludgeoning bourgeoisie of the rhythm guitar, but I found them tasteful enough to prove more memorable than any on Insanity. Sydow does a lot more melodic singing, and I'm still not positive that the right balance had been struck here for him, but certainly there is a lot more depth and weight to his performance than some of the duller lines populating the previous album.

Definitely not an album I 'loved', but I found it overall more catchy, its arrangements stronger than Insanity. As if the band took a breather, examined the direction it was headed, and decided to pull back a bit rather than letting Peter, Jorgen, Klas and Christofer just run absolutely fucking wild, a feat they are capable of at any given moment. Seriously, in terms of raw musicianship, I'd run these guys up against In Flames, At the Gates or Dark Tranquillity and feel quite confident in a huge bet. The level of ability is staggering (no wonder Wildoer recently made it so close to the Dream Theater drum seat); so it's just a matter of whether the songwriting brilliance can match the proficiency on any given day, any given album. Expanding Senses is not quite to the level of excellence of the debut, and very much overshadowed by what would follow (an album I find completely perfectly from its first to last second); but if you can, for 40 minutes, place yourself into its universe of pummeling, dynamic neo-thrash, then it's a positive experience. Also must mention that I loved the cover art on this one much more than the first two. Not sure that the music is quite so surreal or cerebral as what Thomas Ewerhard did there, but it contributes to the whole 'abused in an asylum' aesthetic the band had adopted since the turn of the century.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10] (the plague will not withdraw)

http://www.darkane.com/

Darkane - Insanity (2001)

Insanity is another of those albums I've mentally filed away for several years; a general lack of interest in my first few listens when I bought it culminated into an ensuing decade of indifference, broken only by a few occasional attempts to further penetrate its surface. After so rapidly and completely warming up to Rusted Angel, this was somewhat of a letdown, and I still feel the same, but perhaps Insanity is not an album one should write off so quickly, because it's not exactly lacking in the effort department, and the very least follows the footsteps of the debut. Today I greet this disc with an 'enthusiastic neutrality', in part because it introduced us to the band's next vocalist Andreas Sydow, and in part because it has a few buried gems further down the track list.

It's difficult to define exactly what makes the first record so special, and this one sub par, because they are more or less written in the same mold. Kinetic, modern thrash that dispenses the virility and vitality of melodic Swedish death metal over a framework of punching mid to faced paced riffs, chugging grooves, and chorus hooks that border upon accessibility without falling over the edge into that banal New England mall and radio targeted metalcore territory I so loathe. It's certainly not any less 'technical' than Rusted Angel, but there is less of that sense of dystopian, metropolitan waste. The production here is a fraction more straightforward, drier and punchier. Less of that drowned futurism evoked through the distortion, reverb and saturated vocals which permeated the debut with such an unforgettable atmosphere. This and Expanding Senses have more of a looney bin aesthetic coursing through them, as opposed to that overcast metropolitan nightscape which had so attracted me. The core structure is the same in terms of riffing variation and the heavy influence of classical music you can hear through the leads, or the intro and instrumental pieces with their strings and choirs, but most of the guitar progressions here just didn't connect to my emotional receptors as their predecessors.

The guitar tone is certainly decent, and thicker even, but I can't say I loved it as it was charging along unless the band were spiking the palm mutes with some clinical melodic picking. In truth, this is probably even more melodic than Rusted Angel due to the more broadly arranged cleaner vocals sequences as in "Emanation of Fear" where Sydow really draws out the syllables like a Swedish version of Fear Factory. The leads tend towards some reverb and flesh out the 'body' of the tracks, but a lot of them go right in one ear and out the opposite, and ultimately they so rarely manage to thrill solely with the rhythm guitars (critical for thrash as far as I'm concerned). There are a few lions among these lambs, like "Psychic Pain" with its immediately memorable thrash riffing, and a great chorus that wouldn't have been out of place on one of the first few Strapping Young Lad records. "The Perverted Beat" is another choice track, sort of a nice ancestor for the amazing "Secondary Effects" from Layers of Lies, but then neither of these tunes has arrived in the first 20 minutes of Insanity...and the only cut that excited me before that was probably "Third", the first metal piece after the strings, and that only for a few of the opening riffs and a half-decent chorus.

Drums are still quite prevalent in the mix, with crashes cutting straight through the walls of melody erupting through the choruses, and the bass playing is still quite good, with a bit more of a springy depth than Rusted Angel. The real story, of course, is Andreas Sydow, who steps into Lawrence Mackrory's position and attempts to do it some justice. He's certainly more of a focused front man on this record, but it's also a little subdued by comparison to some of his later insanity. I love the inherent passion and melody carried in both his cleans and rasps, but numerous of the intonations here just aren't written at a highly memorable level. The best is when he just goes ripshit, like in the "Third" verse, because even if he's not as impish and frenzied sounding as his predecessor, there's a lot more natural psychosis and menace to his barking. He's easily a fit for the position, and in fact my favorite Darkane vocalist, but this simply wasn't his strongest hour.

And that defines Insanity in a nutshell: acceptable, with a few tunes that rise above the din, but far from the band's best material. As a result, the album really didn't capitalize upon the momentum of Rusted Angel, and Darkane rather quickly transformed from a bright, shooting star to just another hazy glow on the firmament of Swedish extremity. Occasionally a sparkle or two, but you wouldn't use it for guidance if you were lost in the wilderness. Still, if you're a sucker for Soilwork circa A Predator's Portrait or Natural Born Chaos, or SYL's City, or Fear Factory's dichotomy of driving, forceful rhythm guitars and melodic climaxes, it might be something you'd want to check out. I'm not entirely sold on the album even to this day, but if asked five years ago I might have rated lower. It's not bad at all, but it stands alongside Demonic Art as a less inspired outing in an otherwise smashing catalog.

Verdict: Indifference [6.75/10] (treading on disconsolate faces)

http://www.darkane.com/

Darkane - Rusted Angel (1999)

Rusted Angel was an album I initially had some resistance towards, since it dropped at a time in which I was inundated by At the Gates worship here in the local scene. I couldn't walk ten feet to get a Slurpee at the mall without some ear-stretched metalcore teen asking if I'd heard 'this new band At the Gates', and like a lot of harder line metal heads who had survived the 80s and not gone over entirely to grunge and alt rock in the ensuing decade, I was sick of all the Johnny-come-lately wagoneering wiggas getting up in my grill with bands I had already been listening to for much of the decade. In retrospect, I must have felt 'threatened' by the popularity of my coveted Swedish metal, and I'm sure I wasn't the only person. In fact, looking around today at internet reactions and various conversations I've had at gigs, I'm POSITIVE that this is a mentality which seems to persist any time some hot new sound arrives. But the truth is, I was being an ornery, immature, jagged nutsack: At the Gates was a great band, Slaughter of the Soul was a great record, and as it turns out, so was Rusted Angel. Props to another local musician who urged me to reconsider the Darkane debut...else it might have taken me a lot longer to get around to it.

The At the Gates comparison is admittedly marginal here, perhaps even coincidental, because while the schizoid vocals of Lawrence Mackrory occasionally resemble a Lindberg snarl, and I have no question that Darkane benefited greatly from hype generated by the melodeath trinity of AtG, Dark Tranquillity and In Flames, the song structures and individual riffs are far more prescient of a 'future thrash' variety. And this is what ultimately won me over to Rusted Angel: its urbane, bleak and almost mechanical sense of modernity. It's like a group of Swedes took a bunch of their favorite Teutonic and Bay Area thrash records circa '86 to '90 over to a recycling factory, watched them crushed into a cube, and then through some miracle of modern technology, managed to listen to the results on an audio player. But it's even more than that: intersperse some clearly neo-classical influence in the guitar progressions, and interchange Mackrory's petulant rasping with some Burton Bell-esque, melodic choral overtures, and you've got one exhilarating dynamo of a debut that easily surpassed their countrymen Soilwork, who would go on to immediately eclipse this in popularity with their own debut Steelbath Suicide (as an aside, 'Speed' was actually singing with Darkane for a short time). While I do enjoy that other album as a frenetic, youthful and futuristic spin on Slaughter of the Soul, Rusted Angel was the better of the two, and brought far much more to the table...

One thing that will either make this or break this album for many listeners is how willing they are to adapt to its atmosphere. Darkane was not averse to heavily dowsing the guitars and vocals in distortion or effects that lent to its post-modern, nigh on apocalyptic environs, and measured against the athletic drumming of Peter Wildoer and the symphonics used as intros and interludes, it definitely develops this glassy, smoggy sensation of oppression. Like some dark, post-industrial dystopia in decay, hovering at the edge of eternal night, through which cybernetic young roughs wage turf wars, their chieftains howling at one another from occupied skyscrapers of glass and rusting steel as the 'soldiers' go at one another with flak cannons and motorcycle chains. West Side Story meets Shadowrunner. Dark City metal. Enter the Matrix, dudes. A battle on the edge of a tomorrow that may never come. Queue the acid rain. The lightning. At numerous points on the album I can picture Rick Deckard donning his fedora as he gazes apprehensively into the haze of smoking vid screens, neon advertised human organ cloning services, and cyborg dope dealers. Waitin' for Edward Olmos to give him a lift in his origami machine. The imagery this disc conjures truly stokes my cyberpunk-fueled imagination, but I can understand how some might find the thrashing and churning tone of the guitars a little too harsh and mechanical...

It DOES help that Darkane sports one of the best Swedish guitar duos out there, in Klas Ideberg and Christofer Malmström, both fine composers who imbue the low end, chugging thrash momentum with just enough of a harmonic, melodic weave that at no point does it every grow dull. They might not have been performing the most complex, technical death metal out there, but as far as the melodic thrash goes in the 90s, these guys were really at the cutting edge. I love the blistering glazes of wired melodies they evoke into tunes like "Chase for Existence". They introduce a lot of interesting fills at the end of the charging progressions which help enforce the aforementioned 'industrial' aesthetic in the writing, and though they would compose superior leads on future efforts (like Layer of Lies), they were already accomplished shredders here. But really, some of the speed picked thrashing patterns like the intro to "July 1999" simply have to be heard to be believed, and almost all the licks here simply scream 'THRASH IS NOT DEAD' into the electrified mist that drowns them. I won't even get into how brilliant the experimental instrumental "The Arcane Darkness" is... The bassist Jörgen Löfberg is also pretty skilled, managing to anchor the rhythm guitars with a tightly sprung, pumping tone that tirelessly plods on like a sewage sluice.

As great as the musicianship is all around, though, I think most would agree that this is the finest hour of  Lawrence Mackrory among the many records he's either sung or played bass on. The guy is a snarling, murmuring threat that sends the Defcon reeling. Like an impish cyber-successor to the splatter thrash inflection of  Blaine 'Fart' Cook (The Accused), and yet he's still capable of hitting those soaring, climactic chorus parts like over the thundering double bass in "A Wisdoms Breed". I'm not a 'jump da fuc up' sort of guy, at least I haven't been since Everlast was ordering me to do it, but when he hits a chorus like this I feel like entering a pole vault competition. They immediately escalate the aggression to something glorious and catchy without ever bordering on cheesy, and still keeping the atmosphere of the album dirty. What's more, they've actually managed to hire a chorus for pieces like the album intro; a lofty and ambitious move for an unknown death/thrash band on a debut album, wouldn't you say? But it works, this constant clash of both the old and the new, and I'd go beyond that to say it's inspirational. Why wasn't Rusted Angel one of the biggest records of its day? Probably because assholes like me wrote it off for a couple months too many...

I wouldn't call it perfect, and it's not the Swedes' masterpiece. That would come later, with an album that closely resembles this one but truly fleshes out the songwriting. There are a few riffs here or there that just don't inspire as much as their neighbors, and though I love all the manic vocal/axe effects bouncing around, there are moments where the drums will feel a little loud, or the mechanistic post-human atmosphere takes too much priority over the headbanging fervor. It definitely has more 'feeling' to it than fellow Swedes Meshuggah, who had put out a killer record some months prior in Chaosphere, but I feel as if the inherent harshness of Rusted Angel's reality could have used just a handful more of its memorable melodies and chorus climaxes to really balance itself out. That said, this is a pretty killer introduction to one of the better acts to hail from that Swedish explosion of the mid through late 90s, and still holds up rather well as I thrash out to it now. Dense, tense, destructive, dystopian and lyrically depressing, it's the Snow Crash of Swedish death thrash. Pizza delivery in 30 minutes or less, or the delivery guy gets whacked.

Verdict: Win [9/10] (suffering now has a face)

http://www.darkane.com/

Darkane - Layers of Lies (2005)

It took a few albums for Darkane to trump their excellent debut Rusted Angel, but trump it they did. Both Insanity and Expanded Senses maintained the band's use of technical precision, high velocity Swedish death/thrash, but they lacked a little of that debut's depth and biting, charismatic edge. Layers of Lies recaptures that quality and complexity, and in fact surpasses it. I was initially thrilled by the album, but it wasn't until recently that I started spinning it again and became even further enamored of its charms.

Layers of Lies, as the title might imply, is a bewildering and challenging arrangement of piston fueled Swedish thrashing the likes of which only Darkane can conjure. The composition skills of Klas Ideberg and his bandmates are stunning, and I haven't been able to appreciate thrash at this level since the late 80s; bands like Artillery or Deathrow jump to mind (in terms of their riffing skills, they sound nothing like Darkane). This isn't a wanking type of technicality though, it's a skill at creating innovative note selections and an almost constant business to the guitars. I admit, not all of the tracks here stand out right away. It's the type of album that will grow upon a listener as the boundaries of its gray matter expand to the devastation. Add to this the best vocal performance (and sad swan song) of Andreas Sydow to date and you've got a total crusher. The lyrics to the tracks are excellent explorations of violence and the social construct; the human organism and its true purpose and limitations within the confines of nature and civilization.

It begins much like Rusted Angel, with an orchestral intro. This one is known as the "Amnesia of the Wildoerian Apocalypse", named for the band's amazing drummer/composer. The end of the intro begins a slow thrashing haul, and then "Secondary Effects" explodes onto your ears with more passion than most other bands can summon throughout their entire careers. The verse riffs are absolutely fucking intense, and Sydow BEATS the lyrics into you harder than Tomas Lindberg or Anders Fridén could even dream of doing (no offense to that pair of vocalists). The bridge riff is unbelievable, and the chorus epic, as Sydow coughs up:

Orgasmic smell of blood, a new born beast
I have become, I have arrived to join this feast
Born a beast

Once this fantastic track ends, there is no rest for the wicked. "Organic Canvas" bewitches you with its winding chops, barbaric drumming and catchy barking. "Fading Dimensions" begins with a few doomy tones but it isn't long until you are once again pummeled with Darkane's brand of depth charge thrash metal broken up by catchy vocal hooks. The title track is immaculate; beautiful acoustic and lead tapestries part into a bludgeoning and intense mid-paced thrash hook which is so industrial in its feel that you can close your eyes and instantly summon a vision of a long forgotten, rusted but still operative factory churning out waste. The chorus here is also particularly fetching. "Godforsaken Universe" picks right back up into the faster pace, and "Vision of Degradation" works its slower voodoo upon you, picking up for some intense grooves that will probably make you at least ball up your fists, even if there is noone standing nearby to hit with them. "Contaminated" is just par for the course, but begins with a sort of bluesy entry into its sheer awesome. "Maelstrom Crisis" is a glorious instrumental piece which evokes some classical/acoustic sounds amidst its inventive thrash. "Decadent Messiah" starts with bass and then injects a little mathematical groove before it really picks up. Another killer chorus shouts:

Kneel down
Bow before his feet
The master of deceit
Bloodstained, raging liar
Rule with death and fire
Decadent Messiah

The album offers no relief on the ending track "Creation Insane". You won't want any relief, because this is just that fucking good. Trust me, if you don't pick it up the first listen through, continue to do so. You will worship this. Hell...even if you DO pick it up the first listen through, listen to it again! The mix of the album is crushing, one of the best I've ever heard from a Swedish metal album. Every subtle note and bold crushing rhythm is balanced to perfect effect. Sydow's vocals truly stand out and it's a goddamned shame he left after this album. The following album Demonic Art is simply not this good, nor is Jens Broman (a decent vocalist in his own right). Even the cover art here is pristine.

As a musician myself, this is the type of album that turns me vomit green with envy, because I know I will likely never in my life create something of this depth and complexity. It's a flawless album and the fact it's been overlooked by many aside from the usual crowd of Darkane fans or those deep into the Swedish death/thrash scene is once again a crime against humanity. What more could I possibly offer that wouldn't simply be stealing away your attention or time in tracking down this album for yourself?

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Verdict: Epic Win [10.5/10] (no one survives a visit in my hell)

http://www.darkane.com/