Into Cold Darkness

Well, Vital Remains has done it again. They released yet another terrifying and brutal album following their debut masterpiece, with songs consisting of much quicker tempos and heavier, angrier riffs and vocals. Into Cold Darkness, though not as astonishing as Let Us Pray, is one intense album with some amazing head-banging material!

Vital Remains were such an obscured band with a raging fire burning in their hearts in these early days long before the arrival of Glen Benton, not to say those last two albums sucked, but the '90s were clearly a better time for Vital Remains. Vital Remains changed their slow musical style heard on Let us Pray and incorporated faster and heavier songwriting and for the first time in the band's career, blast-beats were introduced on this album. There's a stronger sense of brutality on Into Cold Darkness, but the music still allows a bit of slower, sinister atmospheric moments (the middle of the song Immortal Crusade for example) to enter the fast brutality of these songs. These slower atmospheric moments have a strong black metal influence too, turning everything from raging death metal chaos to this cold, darkness that will remind you of the atmosphere surrounding old Norwegian black metal bands.

The musicianship is fantastic again, just as it was on Vital's previous work. The guitars have an awesome tone for the fast riffs that are played. The blast-beats and drumming patterns are very professional, they never go off tempo, and they sound like actual drums and not machine guns like on many digitally-produced death metal albums today. Jeff's vocals are just as savage as they were on Let Us Pray and just roaring with vehemence.

The song structures are just as unconventional as the song structures of Let Us Pray, in which the riffs change a lot throughout each song and it mixes black metal riffs with death metal riffs. No neo-classical melody enters Vital's music yet, however. Nothing is that repetitive at all, and this album's musical style perfectly defines the sound of blackened death metal, flawlessly.

The two covers on Into Cold Darkness, Dethroned Emperor and Countess Bathory, are performed well. They're definitely not as excellent as the originals, but it seems as if Vital took these songs and performed them with their own style, as if they were trying to not sound like Celtic Frost or Venom, but perform these songs the way how they would if they wrote them.

Overall, Into Cold Darkness is an intense release and an excellent followup to their debut. They truly define the sound of blackened death metal much better than any other band with this overlooked release.