Darkened – Defilers of the Light
Release Date: 14th June 2024
Label: Edged Circle Productions
Bandcamp
Genre: Death Metal
FFO: Morbid Angel, Jungle Rot, Bolt Thrower, Dismember, Bloodbath, Cannibal Corpse.
Review By: Rick Farley
With a who’s who list of death metal veterans here, (Grave, ex-Dismember and Destroyer 666) you might expect Swedish/Canadian quintet Darkened to play killer, groovy razor sharp death metal that hits like a fucking tanker truck. Well, you would not be wrong in that assumption, because that is exactly what this is. Good ole fashioned, snarling, headbanging, classic death metal. The kind that is severally underrepresented in today’s progressive, tech-death and knuckle dragging OSDM worship. Which are all perfectly fine mind you, it’s that sometimes you just need to break your neck at 240 BPM’s while being brutally beaten with darkly melodic, chunky riffs and pummelling double bass. Think Jungle Rot meets Dismember meets Morbid Angel. If that doesn’t get you stoked, you are probably listening to the wrong music.
With all that said, Darkened are not merely a band stuck in the past, these merchants of death, also deal their brutality through exciting flurries of modern ideals. Big hooks, clinical precision and extreme heaviness presented with excellent production, tightly woven into forty-three minutes of engaging and battering death metal. This makes Defilers of the Light, the bands third full length album releasing June 14th, 2024, via Edged Circle Productions quite an intriguing listen. While not being too overly adventurous, you can expect a familiarity of killer songs that hit all those sweet classic death metal spots that we crave so much, without ever crossing into sounding like a clone or being too old school.
Darkened have a wealth of death metal experience, deserving its very own spot on your record shelf amongst those classic bands. Comprised of vocalist Gord Olson, whose growling bellow comes straight from the pit of the gut, course and low, it fits the music like a monstrous grizzly roaring angrily as it’s tearing your limbs off one by one. Guitarists Hempa Brynolfsson and Linus Nirbrant attack every inch of your flesh with buzzsaw jagged riffs and wicked melodic leads. Groove laden, complexly layered and utterly disgusting, the guitars rip, snarl, and tear at your flesh. The bruising low end is provided by bassist Tobias Cristiansson, full sounding and warm, the deep tones provide an impenetrable wall of sound underneath the chaos. Drummer Perra Karlsson pounds the skins with reckless abandon. Setting up the neck wrecking grooves as well as the bone shattering speed of a war train designed to annihilate anything in its path.
With looming tracks like Those Who Dwell Below, that shift between menacing hooks, dark melodies, and fast chugging, you feel the Swedeath buzzsaw tones as well as the Florida death metal influence amalgamating like two fleshy corpses resurrected as one. The sinister melody build-up of Masses of Vain Observance gives way to a hellish swagger that is as powerful as it is wicked. A slower to mid paced head banger that’s evil sounding enough to conjure up a demon right through your speakers. While As Apocalypse Dawns is a full on blistering death metal beater set only to kill.
Defilers ofthe Light is an easy recommend to anyone that misses this classic death metal sound, just with less knuckle dragging. Horns up.
(4 / 5)
