Remember the doom/death metal band Sorrow from LI, New York?  I still have their demo when they were called Apparition, saw them live a few times, then they changed their name to Sorrow and put out an ep and album.  Some of my favorite music.  I became friends with the drummer, Mike, who then had me do guest vocals on his band, Dystopia One, on their second album.  Anyway Sorrow’s guitarist Brett Clarin, had a really cool record store in Suffolk County, NY called Non Of the Above Records.  I dropped some coin there on more than one occasion.

Brett and I have been in touch recently and he informed me about his band called Journey into Darkness and that it was best described as symphonic black metal.  He did not know if this is something that I would want to review and I said sure, man send it on over. The band was formed in the mid/late 90’s and Brett has complete creative control – he does it all, a one man band and he self-releases his music so he can retain the rights to the music.  In 1996 the debut album Life Is a Near Death Experience was released.  All instrumentals – if that’s your thing go check it out.  Multitudes of Emptiness is the follow-up some 25 years later and it’s 8 songs, 4 of them instrumentals.  Brett obviously has a thing for instrumentals.

“Into Nothingness” opens the album, as an instrumental.  Some cool sounds, and then “To Be Human Is to Be Inhuman” comes right through your speakers.  The drum machine is not bad sounding, you can tell it’s a drum machine, but it does its purpose.  Some dual-layered vocals around the minute mark and then more into the speedier passages with the black metal vocals. Jei Doublerice is the session vocalist for Brett’s band and does a decent job.  The fast part is not blasting, more rooted in the speed of the 90’s death metal scene.  I like the moody parts with the double bass and the dual-layered vox, which repeat themselves, so it sticks in your head, as does the main guitar riff.

“Programmed to Die” has some nice programmed in synths/orchestral sounding moments and the song builds up until it gets into full blast mode, then slows down and nice atmospheric arrangements.  More of the dual-layered vocals combining the deep death metal vocals mixed with black metal stylized vox.  The song has some off-kilter slow moments, then right into the blasting.  “Sending Death” has an epic start to the song with the synth moments, resembling an orchestra and the sound being used is stupidly catchy.  I cannot stop humming the part.  It really goes well with the guitar riff and they mix very well.  The, ahem, multitude of the instrumentals and interludes work very nicely.  They’re all very catchy and between those and the regular songs they fit perfectly with the space-themed, blue album cover.

Brett has a cool band going with Journey into Darkness.  Multitudes of Emptiness is experimental symphonic black metal, which sounds rather good and it’s a short album, clocking in at 28 minutes.  It has some catchy guitar hooks and synth styled orchestra moments which pushes the sounds towards the atmospheric realm of things.  Lots of atmosphere on this.  It’s pretty original, I really could not pinpoint bands in this style and it could be that I just have not dipped a lot into those bands.  This is some weird shit and I am digging it.  He just received the physical cds in, so if you dig this type of music, like their Facebook page, get the download or cd from them too.  Brett’s not making any money off of this and is just trying to get his latest creative endeavor out there, so go ahead and support Journey into Darkness.

[Visit the band's website]

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