Album Review: Tardus Mortem – Engulfed In Pestilent Darkness (Emanzipation Productions)

Tardus Mortem is a blackened death metal band from Denmark whose sole purpose is to suffocate the listener with ominous tales of Christ, providence and the impending Armageddon. Tardus Mortem take the listener into a bleak and dismal existence depicting human and godly atrocities.

This is the essence of Tardus Mortem’s debut album. Engulfed in Pestilent Darkness was originally released in a limited cassette tape edition in 2019 and quickly spread into the underground like the foulest of fumes. Now, the cult gets a new chapter by being released in a limited LP (only 100 copies) and digital format via Emanzipation Productions on May 28th, 2021.

From the deepest and darkest pits of blackened death metal comes Tardus Mortem and the sickening noise of Engulfed in Pestilent Darkness. An album that is the sound of hellish horror personified. It’s the noise that emanates from places that light just can’t reach and as rough to the ears as sandpaper rubbed over a fresh wound,

So rough in fact, that it is a tough listen. Everything has been down-tuned to such an effect that it just comes at you in a wave of rumbles, groans and roars. So much so that when you get a bit of clear and clean guitar, it immediately gets more exciting. These moments are rare though as Tardus Mortem deal almost exclusively in brutal, filth covered bleak blackness. With tempo shifts dotted around that takes the album in a more death or doom infused direction.

It puts you in the mind of a gritty low-budget indie horror movie. You know, the type that was filmed on a mobile phone and has piss-poor sound and light quality but has charm because it’s so damn violent and gory. The kind of intense horror that makes you wonder if what you’re watching is actually a snuff movie.

That’s what we have here. The equivalent of a snuff movie. The audio version of death and destruction. It has charm, just not enough to make naysayers of extreme feel any differently. It’s not even possible to say fans of extreme will lap it up either as it’s so chaotic and messy.

Tardus Mortem – Engulfed in Pestilent Darkness Full Track Listing:

1. In Purgatorial Depths
2. It Comes From The Darkened Obscurity
3. Transcending The Human Form Through Ascending Transmorphism
4. The Conclusion Of Non-Existence (Embracing The Infinite Nothing)
5. Engulfed in Pestilent Darkness
6. Travelling Through The Dimensions Of Darkness
7. As Life Ends
8. Tardum Spiritum Affert Ut Mortem

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