Band:	Darkmoon
Album:	Black Domain
Style:	Black metal, Melodic death metal, Thrash metal
Release date:	2003
Guest review by:	Bas

01. The Darkside
02. Winds Of Death
03. Drowning
04. Black Domain
05. Terror

Darkmoon's third demo release? and one of the best demos I've ever heard for that matter. Starting off with a rather horrible intro the album then turns to a great festival of killer riffs and menacing melodies. Thundering drums and awesome growls round up the compositions. The production really shines here by being imperfect. Usually I like my production extremely clean, which is the reason I am not too fond of most black metal, but here it's perfect. It's only a little bit bad so you can still hear everything very clearly but the tiny amount of static adds a great atmosphere to the music.

The songs are mainly black metal oriented, but a small dose of thrash metal, especially in the drumming, makes this four-tracker (not counting the intro) really shine. The vocals are very deep growls, no grunts though, and have quite some variation. Sometimes they're very fast and at others they are more like hoarse whispers. Always great though! The bulk of the music lies in the guitar work. Black metal-ish riffs, played with great musicianship, send shivers down your spine while the drumming is mainly background and atmosphere, but works extremely well.

A few melodic parts make the extreme ones seem more extreme and adds to the atmosphere. Sometimes I get the impression that this is how agony would sound if we could hear our emotions; the riffs dripping with hate, the drumming thundering with fury, and the vocals reeking of bitterness and pain.

This was the demo that got a label contract for Darkmoon back in 2003. And it was well-deserved. In my opinion one of the greatest demos around.