Darkening is a project of Atlanta based musician Jeff Carter, who put out a debut album titled Augür back in July. Darkening deliver a fantastically fresh and frankly rather ferocious take on melodic death/black metal with influences from doom and prog metal.
Augür breathes new life into this well-worn sound with little more than a keen grasp of dynamics and superior songwriting ability.
The nine songs which make up Augür weave together an enviable series of groaning, titanic riffs and grim, torturous growls and touches of darkly beautiful melody, wrapped up in a claustrophobic atmosphere of brooding shadows and haunting half-light which hints at some blackened marrow in the project’s bones.
Augür will come to be seen as more than just another entry in the ever-growing canon of US death/black/doom, but rather as a vital catalyst in the much needed renaissance of the genre. It’s really good.
Indeed, although the sound may be a familiar one, Augür simply feels fresher and more alive with potential than many of the more established acts who deal in this same mix of genres, and hopefully stands as a harbinger of even greater things to come from the hands of Carter.
