Jen, one of extremely few Norwegian (i.e. "real"
) out-metal releases I heard with snippets of actual darkness to it, was the Ved Buens Ende album from 20+ years ago. Quite possibly because those dudes were among the only ones to spend any time reading and contemplating the true nature not of any "animated death" but of
life. The main trap of "cartoon metal" is the constant allusion to supernatural beings and the supposedly divine, thus exposing the infantility of "belief" (and the fact that purveyors often came reluctantly of age from watching horror movies, not from intinctive acts of epistemology) - as a token to the conundrum of human longing versus doubt. Having myself been in effect dead and revived in 2006, there was only confirmation of oblivion in that "beyond" I saw - nothing even remotely other. Darkness, to me, is nothingness and the tragedy of expectance - as articulated by Camus and, more lately, C. McCarthy a.o.
Other than that, from here, arctic progressive band Thule showcased genuine darkness on
Natt ("Night", 1989) and
Graks (1997) especially. Earlier Norwegian avant-rock band Holy Toy - led by bizarro oddball troubleman and multi-artist Adreij Dziubek Nebb (originally a refugee from Poland) - were the darkest project ever to form up here.
Lach'n Jonsson's "Monument" - from his
Songs from Cities of Decay - is possibly the darkest thing I encountered from a musician even distantly associated with rock music. In the summer of 2013, constant listening to this brought me 75 hours of sleep deprivation. Bad days.
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