By now, the name DARKENED should require no introduction. From their formation in 2018 featuring a veritable "who's who" of death metal royalty and the auspicious Into the Blackness debut EP on to their even-more-widely-celebrated debut album, Kingdom of Darkness, that royalty - drummer Andy Whale (Memoriam, ex-Bolt Thrower), vocalist Gord Olson (Ye Goat-Herd Gods / Demisery), guitarists Linus Nirbrant (A Canorous Quintet / This Ending) and Hempa Brynolfsson (Excruciate / Ordo Infernus), and new bassist Tobias Cristiansson (Grave / ex-Dismember) - proved that they weren't ready to rest on their all-too-considerable laurels.
While doubtlessly a summation of their combined histories in death metal, DARKENED continued to finesse that sound into something all their own last year, first with the Mourn the Dying Light EP and then successive second album The Black Winter. World-eating all-caps DEATH METAL with atmosphere to spare? You bet!
And so the tank rolls on with DARKENED's new two-song EP, Lord of Sickness and Bile, with Whale departing and veteran Perra Karlsson (ANGELBLAST, In Aeternum, Nominom) coming in to the drum-throne. Featuring two exclusive songs and an 11-minute runtime, Lord of Sickness and Bile gets the job done with startling, throttling efficiency. Both songs carry forward the evolutionary steps made last year - spaciousness and suffocation in equal measure, a seamless integration of haunting melody, an utterly dense onslaught of sound either way - and again does everything sound HUGE, even when racing forward with palpitating propulsion. Drums were recorded and engineered by Pontus Ekwall at Studio Cave, and Gord Olson handled the mixing & mastering: more DIY this time, but an utterly massive result given the EP's brevity. Capped by characteristic artwork by Juanjo Castellano, Lord of Sickness and Bile is another gem in the DARKENED discography!
TRACKLIST
01 – Steal Kill Destroy
02 – Archaic Wounds
