Review Summary: Darkthrone wasn't the only black metal band who once made some awesome OSDM.
Nowadays, Marduk is a very well-known band within the black metal genre. Chances are they're one of the names that comes up when someone is discussing the more entry level stuff to help get people started in listening to black metal. This album,
Dark Endless, was their debut full-length, released in the year 1992.
In their earlier days, Marduk played a little bit of a different style than their known for today. Now being known as pretty much straight-up black metal band, they liked to add a bit of a death metal twist to their music back in the day. The production here is very reminiscent of what was coming from bands like Morbid Angel and Dismember from around this time. In fact, most of the riffing here is very death metal inspired as well. And believe me, to this day Marduk is still one of the hardest riffing black metal bands and it was even more apparent back around the time this was released. All the thanks for that goes to the founder of the band and main songwriter Morgan Häkansson. There are a few black metal styled riffs thrown in here and some tremolo picking as well, but deep down, says that it's an old-school death metal album. You could even call it a blackened death metal album if you wanted to. The main black metal influence on this album comes from the vocals, which are a snarly and very raspy scream, courtesy of then vocalist Andreas Axelsson.
People who don't really enjoy the way Marduk sounds nowadays very well may like this album. It's their only album that is heavily influenced by the old-school death metal sound considering they turned almost completely into a black metal band on their following albums. So if you don't enjoy the way they sound as a black metal band, there's no harm in trying out how they were as a death metal band. To be honest, I love their black metal albums as well, but I wouldn't have complained if they continued down the path that they were on here because they made some damn good death metal.
