I - WITHIN DEEP DARK CHAMBERS

Here is the debut album, by the self-proclaimed suicidal black metal band Shining. Although I certainly prefer the band's later, more complex and experimental material, I've generally found that I can muster appreciation for just about any angle the realm of black metal has been able to throw at me. This is not to suggest that I have liked everything I have heard though, only that I am fairly indiscriminate when it comes to particular takes on the style. Shining was already established in my mind as being a great band by the time I found my way to listening to their debut 'Within Deep Dark Chambers', and with a 2011 re-release impending, there was no better time to check out this classic of depressive black metal than now. While I have found some easy favourites in this particularly introspective and dismal black metal scene, Shining's debut sadly fails to inspire me or my emotions in any major way, instead coming across to me as a rather generic piece of Scandinavian black metal.

Like much of the rawer black metal, the music Shining makes here on 'Within Deep Dark Chambers' is particularly repetitive, taking simple riffs and using them sometimes throughout the course of an entire song, changing things up here and there to keep it from being a total bore. Save for a few softer moments- which almost always come as a refreshment- the blastbeats are in full swing here, recorded no less in the sort of way someone might typically expect raw black metal to be recorded. The music and riffs are never really beautiful, but are certainly depressive; the endless repetition and generic nature of the record tends to wear thin before long.

Towards the end of the record, things do start to pick up, even ending on a higher note with a cover of dark metal pioneers Bethlehem, which is a pleasant exchange to cap off the album. Raw black metal certainly has its place, but Shining does little here to really inspire the imagination, although it is certainly not a complete failure. There is not much to grasp onto here so for anyone but fans of the less refined black metal sound, I would instead recommend the sort of things Shining has crafted later in their career.

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