### Zardens: Breeding the dark

#### 08/02/12 || Smalley

I guess “Breeding the dark” wouldn’t be quite as fun as breeding IN the dark, but how the hell would I know…? Heh heh… heh? Okay enough; after a cheesy, pointless synth intro as useless as any interlude Morbido Angelo ever made, we kick into some thrash-y riffing and icy guitar tones that comes off like Dissection’s “Night’s blood” (with a little bit of guitar-phrasing reminiscent of “Show no mercy”-era Slayer!!!). Though, it does have non-parasitic catchiness & energy to spare (especially with the drummer’s blasting), so it isn’t simply reliant on sound-nostalgia, but I do dig hearing those serpentine kind of melodies/solos that recall Nödtveidt’s playing, whenever they pop up.

So, the first official song does go on too long, but at least it changes up often enough to stay interesting, and the second track is a neat change of pace from there, switching from that melodic-ish black metal sound to what I like to describe as “blizzard black metal”, where the guitars constantly drone away and wear away at you like the merciless winds of an ice storm, the drummer is in a sort of low-key blastmode, where it’s a repetitive, not-really-super-fast kind of blast, and your school buddy follows you as the song plays as you trudge through the snowy woods near your house, with a grainy camera pointed at the ground as you both make the world’s cheapest video. The track after that one doesn’t strongly remind me of any particular sub-style of black metal, and neither does the rest of the album, really (save for some Windir influences, which are always welcome anyway), but it’s still all reasonably good, entertaining, and interesting material all-around.

7,5/10: Check it out.