I det glimrande mörkrets djup

In The Glimmering Depths Of Darkness.

I'll be the last to admit that I was not expecting an album nearly as good as this when I first stumbled across it. It's not my all-time favorite album, but it's definitely one of them and one of the ONLY albums I would give a perfect 100% rating to from a critical perspective, and for good reason. As most of you fellow metalheads know, Sweden is the king of melodic metal. (Black/death in specific), hailing bands like Dissection, At The Gates, Unanimated, Dark Tranquility, and so on. There are many underappreciated bands from Sweden as well that for some reason just didn't get on that radar like they deserved, and Sorhin is one such band.

This is their debut album, and I mean I don't even really know where to start with this one. It's just so damn good. Every second of the album from start to finish is a dark, wintry masterpiece. They are extremely melodic as most Swedish bands are, but they do something with their guitars that make them stand out from other bands of the time, so you'll know when it's Sorhin that you're listening to. The vocals are not super unique, they're your typical black metal vocals, but they are pretty cool to hear and sound very crisp. The lyrics are great, though entirely in Swedish to keep its authenticity. Despite using pentagrams everywhere in the album booklet, I applaud them a lot for writing lyrics based on nature, depression, Winter, Darkness, etc. Though this is pretty common in black metal, I much prefer this stuff instead of the typical satanic stuff that you hear in a lot of other black metal albums. The album title loosely translates to "In The Glimmering Depths Of Darkness", which I think is a VERY fitting album name. Despite the high amount of melody, there is an undeniable sense of a very cold, gloomy, dark and evil atmosphere. Usually, most black metal bands excel very well with one of the two things but fail at the other. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that they manage to perfectly capture the atmosphere they were aiming for while surpassing my expectations of melody. The drums are also well varied and well paced. They are slow but effective on the slower songs, yet they sprinkle in blast beats when they need to. (Something that a majority of bands in extreme metal tend to overuse.) Don't get me wrong, I love my blast beats but I feel like they have to be used when needed, instead of being used almost entirely through the whole song. As I've said more than I probably needed to, this album is just so melodic. The guitars really steal the show here over everything else. The guitars have their own harmonies that sound perfect with both guitars together (i.e how the harmonies work in other Swedish bands like Dissection, Sacramentum, etc), but there is a very dark tone to the guitars despite being tuned only in standard. This dark tone helps it stick out more, as I haven't heard another "Melodic Black Metal" band that has the same tone as Sorhin, at least in this album. The bass is pretty much inaudible as with most other black metal albums, but if you pay attention, you can hear it and it harmonizes well with the guitars.

Lastly, the production was perfect. It hits that "Just right" spot. My major gripe with most black metal albums is that the production is TOO bad and it both hurts your ears to listen to it, and the quality is so bad, you cant hear ANYTHING aside from the vocals and the drums, while the guitars just sound like static. This is a huge problem because it ruins the ability to fully listen to the songs. I'll admit that there is something grim and raw about lower quality production in albums, but usually, most bands overdo it. However, I think Sorhin saw this. They kept the quality low enough to sound fresh and raw, but they also didn't make it inaudibly low. You can hear everything perfectly. (aside from the bass as I mentioned, but if you're focusing you can even hear that too.) So all in all, I think this album has the perfect production quality as well, which is also very rare for me to find.

Standout tracks: "Svartvintras", "Och Om Natten Min Själ Dansar", " I Skuggan Af Nattens Herre", and "I Det Glimrande Mörkrets Djup", but if you have the time you should definitely listen to the entire album from start to finish. There is not a single second on this that I didn't enjoy. Definitely recommended, don't think about passing this one up!