I - WITHIN DEEP DARK CHAMBERS

I - Within Deep Dark Chambers is the debut full-length studio album by Swedish experimental/ progressive black metal act Shining. The album has been released on both CD and LP. The first pressing of the LP version was limited to only 237 copies. Needles to say it´s a very rare release in that version. Shining made a very intriguing 7´EP release called Submit to Selfdestruction in 1998 and I´ve been pretty excited about how I - Within Deep Dark Chambers would sound.

The music on the album is atmospheric/ melancholic black metal. It´s quite repetitive in nature but never boring. The pace varies from slow to fast. The vocals are raspy and the instrumentation consists of drums, guitars, bass and keyboards. The songs are both heavy and very atmospheric. The songs are all quality compositions but not really outstanding IMO. If I have to complain about something it´s that the musicianship isn´t all that tight. Especially the drums seem untight at times. The production is raw and a bit primitive too and it will depend on your taste if you find this charming or a problem. I noticed that Ren Djävla Angest is a rewritten version of Endless Solitude from Submit to Selfdestruction. It´s also the first song in the band´s discography were the lyrics are in the Swedish language. Something Shining would investigate further on subsequent albums. The six songs on the album are all pretty long with playing times between 6 and 10 minutes.

I - Within Deep Dark Chambers is a good debut album by Shining and while it doesn´t exactly make my blood boil, there are nods toward future greatness that can´t be ignored. A 3 star rating is well deserved.

'I - Within Deep Dark Chambers' - Shining (4/10)

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.

Shining's debut album mashes up Burzumesque black metal with gloomy, doomy riffs and subject matter to create a sonic journey down into the deepest vaults of depression. There's a certain lifelessness to the album which would be a detriment to most circumstances but works well to evoke the misery they are aiming for - this is music which has to make a conscious effort just to get out of bed and face the day, and is always half-tempted to grab a handful of sleeping pills and not get up at all. Niklas Kvarforth is, of course, still with us (the unspeakably silly Ghoul incident and other moments of absolute assholery notwithstanding) so clearly the process of making this music is therapeutic to a certain extent, and when I'm in the right mood it's an intriguing and maudlin experience, though I wouldn't want to listen to it too much if I were actually in a major grump and the band's schtick wears thin over time.

There are some people who are just born to be unhappy despite living in the most fortunate of circumstances. For some reason, Scandinavia has plenty of unhappy souls despite having one of the highest standards of living in the world. Such is the case with young Niklas Kvarforth who started his depressive black metal band SHINING (the Swedish band, not the Norwegian jazz-metal group of the same name) at the tender age of 12. Depressive black metal set itself apart early on in the 90s distinguishing itself other black metal in that it doesn't focus on misanthropy or Satanic themes but rather on self-destruction and all the negative emotions associated with suicide and self hatred. WITHIN DEEP DARK CHAMBERS is the full debut album by Kvarforth who contributes vocals, guitar and keyboard with his lineup of other sickened souls: Tusk on bass, Ted Wedebrand on drums and additional disturbed vocalizations by Andreas Classen.

This debut album is pretty much in line with the depressive black metal scene of the 90s in that it utilizes an overall repetitive, hypnotic and monotonous feel that incorporates the wall of sound guitar frenzy with atmospheric keys, occasional chimes and midstream drums meaning that blastbeats are uncommon and the drums lazily accompany the fuzz feed frenzy. Perhaps the most "depressive" aspect of SHINING's first album is not only the uncompromising fury of the music but mostly of Kvarforth's anguished and tortured vocals above all else. This is one of those albums that simply excels in distressed fury and keeps me on pins and needles wondering if dude isn't gonna do himself in on the final track just to have a musical place in history. Fortunately not so as i like future SHINING albums better than this one. But wow. This definitely fits the depressive black metal bill. Not recommended as music for grandma's funeral.

While this album excels at keeping every shimmer of light from entering the boarded up windows and screams a razor blade, case of aspirin with vodka and carbon monoxide party, the music is fairly straight forward as this was before SHINING started experimenting with more progressive elements as to add more sophistication to self-hating pity party. The music here has the regular black metal buzzsaw grunge, where the guitars and bass are one and the raspy vocals wax and wane between traumatic black metal tantrums about how horrible the world is with utter resignation to the life sucks affirmations. The weakness here is the percussion as it is as languid as a salamander in the arctic and merely keeps the beat and not much else. Overall, this is a decent slice of depressive black metal but some of the tracks which hint towards progressiveness such as "Stonelands" and "And Only Silence Remains?" tend to meander for far too long, however the inclusion of church bells and slow parts in the latter does make it a bit more interesting at times. 3.5 rounded down