Everyone will have their own idea of when exactly Swedish black metal machine Marduk's golden period was, yet such is the Swedes' power and talent that there were and are multiple periods that could be described as 'golden', not least their most recent work. And yet Marduk's debut album generally gets overlooked; some might suggest this is because it lacks the atmospheric nastiness of later works or sheer blasting chaos of their other 90s classics. They'd be wrong both times, of course! Although Dark Endless does quite not show off the Marduk that would make Panzer Division Marduk let alone more complex and nuanced albums such as, say, Wormwood, it does show a talented band in the midst of melding two seams of dark gold in the form of early black metal and death metal, resulting in an album with its own dark atmosphere as well as a gripping sense of violence.

Although an obvious touchstone is the Darkthrone debut, another band that would quickly leave death metal behind for black, the difference is that the Swedes were already much closer to embracing the night, having plenty of galloping chaos and vampiric spookiness in their sound already. Dark Endless is closer to something like Scream Bloody Gore given a gothic doom makeover, in truth, and to this day it still feels nasty and aggressive thanks to the deranged howl of then-frontman Magnus Andreas Axelsson, also of such underground icons as Edge of Sanity and The Lurking Fear. His screech gives Dark Endless much of its bite, aided by a mix that gives the guitars a chainsaw buzz and the drums just enough echo to feel organic and alive.

The producer was, of course, Dan Swanö, and there's plenty of the vitality of the early nineties here, where bands were still figuring out what extreme metal was! Slower, more intense pieces such as Within the Abyss or The Black... are truly heavy as fuck, with sludgy crawling bursts of doomy darkness that show there was very little separation of genres back then and make the launches into practically grinding speed all the more effective when they arrive. Back then Marduk were definitely not the mindless blasting norsecore machine that some would later accuse them of being and the speedier moments here are truly glorious, with far more drumming variety than you'd expect from 1992 thanks to Joakim Götberg.

You can hear the roots of what would become the band's later style here, especially when listening to the likes of Dracul Va Domni Din Nou in Transilvania, which could have come from this album despite having a touch more folksiness to the melodious riffs, or even some of the faster moments of Nightwing. Taking Dark Endless in its own merits, however, there's much to admire. Still Fucking Dead (Here's No Peace) is a downright classic, having attitude and fuck-off aggression to spare despite the incongruous strange piano-and-screeching-opening! The riffing is excellent, the vibe in general closer to early At The Gates than the band we would come to know as Marduk with guitarist "Evil" Morgan already showing his talent and taste off, and even helps with the catchiest moment of the album thanks to the chugging riffs atop the keyboard line that the band move on from all too quickly.

And from then on, it's genuinely hard to pick weaker moments with the epic doomy pulse of The Sun Turns Black As Night helping continue the standard of quality. The Funeral Seemed to Be Endless persists on the band's live playlist to this day for a reason, having intense and infectious riffing driving it on with a compelling percussive central point, even if that fade-out seems like a cop-out all these years later! The likes of Departure From the Mortals and Holy Inquisition have simple yet brutally effective riffs and hit like trucks, and the title track alone is the sort of underrated early extreme metal pounder that every new recruit to our strange and wonderful world should be exposed to; hateful, melodic, metal of the best sort, whatever genre label you stick on it. Even if this was a new album it would be effective - that it was from 1992 suggests it is verging on classic status! Perhaps few die-hard Marduk fans would put this at the top of the band's discography yet it's a genuinely good album that holds up well and shows off the black magic running in their veins - not to be overlooked by fans of underground darkness!