Into Darkness

Winter assured themselves instant cult status with many doom/death metal enthusiasts when they unleashed their indescribably bleak debut album, Into Darkness, in 1992. A towering monument to uneasy listening, the album is metal at its most unpalatable and indigestible, but it's so purposeful and convincing that it naturally transcends most accusations of, well, just plain sucking. The fact is, tracks like "Oppression Freedom," "Goden," and "Eternal Frost" appear composed of the basest elemental building blocks of audible sound -- their creeping rhythms, grainy guitar chords, and bowel-shuddering grunts merely hinting at tunefulness, while leaving only claustrophobic oppression in the wake of their destructive paths. The same is true for the Celtic Frost-tinged "Servants of the Warsmen" and epic-sized testimonials such as "Destiny" and the title track, all of which actually manage to pick up the pace for short spells, but only barely long enough to circulate the blood and keep the body warm -- not quite reanimate the corpse. Simply put, Into Darkness remains unique in its extreme, uncompromising inaccessibility, and its inspiration clearly dies on (get it?) in the works of future sonic-depth explorers like Thorr's Hammer, Sunn 0))), and Unearthly Trance. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia