Band:	Abysmal Darkening
Album:	No Light Behind
Style:	Doom metal
Release date:	April 2011

01. Behold The Gods
02. Dead Eyes
03. A New Dawn
04. Endless March Of The Dead
05. Words Of Doom
06. De Zomer Is Dood
07. Marian

Hmm...So sounding totally freaking evil is still cool, right? I mean, going against the typical qualities of metal is always nice. Creating something juxtaposed to the genre of which it comes is always an interesting listen. Other times though, you just need to enjoy some metal in it's most primal form; simple, dark and heavy.

Abysmal Darkening aren't exactly creating anything out-of-this-world unheard of yet, but they manage to find a nice sort of crossroads between a few forms of doom here. It's not exactly what you'd call a crazy bizarre hybrid, just a cohesive use of styles brought together in a way that really keeps the album from getting too stagnant. It's a dark, extreme sort of work. You know - evil, depressing, raw, grim sounding atmosphere, yadda, yadda, yadda. Yes, we've all heard that before. The nice part about No Light Behind... is the fact that it's balanced out atmosphere with a stoner edge of riff appeal. So you need not be bored if the whole subtle atmosphere pretentious crap isn't exactly your thing.

The drumming is something that can't go without mention on this one. Part of what probably turns many people away from doom metal is the severe lack of interesting drum work by a lot of bands. "Our drummer sucks, Looks like we're just going to have to be a doom band then, guys." Not the case here. This Ludas character appears to actually have the chops to break out of typical doom tempo from time to time, keeping the whole thing a touch more interesting.

There's the odd moment or two that comes as a fault to basically any album you can name, moments that are sort of lack-lustre, a bit dry or repetitive. As a whole though, Abysmal Darkening have come up with a pretty nifty debut here.