{"id":130320,"date":"2025-09-09T13:46:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T13:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/130320\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T13:46:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T13:46:07","slug":"korp-and-darker-it-shall-become-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/130320\/","title":{"rendered":"Korp – And Darker It Shall Become Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"One of my favorite things about metal is how there\u2019s always some name you\u2019ve never heard of who helped kickstart (or at least evolve) our beloved genre. For every towering pillar we are all familiar with, there\u2019s always a lesser heralded name toiling away in the shadows of history, making their unsung contributions to the development of sound and song. Today\u2019s subject comes from Sweden under the moniker Korp (Swedish for \u201craven\u201d), founded in the 90s and unleashing a trio of albums from \u201997 to 2001 before calling it a day a few years later. They made a return in 2017, and a series of EPs in subsequent years have tenderized and marinated their comeback full-length, And Darker It Shall Become. I became interested in this release because the band marketed it as blackened Swedeath, a descriptor which is, for my ears, entirely unique. Blackened death in general is hardly new, but the idea of blackened Swedeath entices with the promises of a rare auditory savagery, so let\u2019s see if this darkness is truly all-enveloping.<\/p>\n

And Darker It Shall Become is first and foremost hook-centric. Every song comes with some sort of main motif to embed itself into your earballs, with flurries and blasts surrounding to compensate. Cuts like \u201cHeavens Ablaze\u201d come out with a bounce to get noggins joggin and toes tapping, with the familiar guitar tone setting in like a warm blanket. The trademark buzzsaws are understated compared to the modern likes of Feral or the Entombed torch bearers, but compositions alternate between mid-paced heft and accelerated assaults. Vocalist Erik Hillstr\u00f6ms helps with the blackened part of the mixture with a higher shriek of a pitch, as opposed to the more traditional guttural barking. Leads follow much more blackened patterns, with an emphasized use of tremolo runs to make up melodic themes in Necrophobic style, with the somewhat thicker chords there to add to the heaviness and the heft. \u201cFurious Tempest Rise\u201d is a fine blueprint of the style, with chug-fixated verses segueing into a prolonged blackened melody for a catchy chorus. Everything is well constructed and ultimately reliable.<\/p>\n

\ufeffAnd Darker It Shall Become by Korp<\/a><\/p>\n

This dependability translates into solid performances across the board. Guitarists Kenny Olsson and Henke Westin serve up a nice collection of leads, with the melodies often taking the spotlight from the typical Swedeath chunk. Drummer Peter Andersson has an excellent sense of stylized restraint, switching up between double-bass attacks for riff emphasis, and snare blasting on occasion without an overreliance on vintage simple bass-and-snare beats. The majority of the songs devolve into mid-tempo bobbers with flourishes of speedy violence for variety, allowing him to show off a decent amount of beat-making skills. All songs are delivered with confidence, clearly bearing the mark of a band who know their trade and were around when it was being pushed into more extreme directions.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The problem with And Darker It Shall Become is that in its well-assembled reliability, it fails to transcend into anything approaching long-term memorability. The fusion of Swedeath and \u201cblackened\u201d ingredients has resulted in such a middle-of-the-road mixture that no real element raises its head in superiority and force. Opening track \u201cBlood Upon the Throne\u201d sounds like a real winner, with a flourish of an isolated melody set against a mean chord progression which emphasizes the presence of both song-writing styles, but such moments of interest are fleeting and rare. Korp have cobbled together a batch of songs which are enjoyable while they are on, and there\u2019s certainly no individual cut that one could deem \u201cbad.\u201d And yet, there\u2019s something lacking; a clear X factor to push the music forward. The production doesn\u2019t help, sacrificing the typical buzzsaws for a gentle hum to emphasize the leads, yet never presenting one worthy of the blackened greats in their ear-piercing violations. Instead of this being excellent death metal with a blackened flair, or enticing black metal with death\u2019s sense of brutality, And Darker It Shall Become is a painful compromise between disparaging styles where both elements end up simultaneously subservient to each other, rendering the album less than the sum of its parts.<\/p>\n

Korp is comprised of competent musicians who know their way around crafting a mean tune, and yet I cannot help but leave And Darker It Shall Become underwhelmed. By fusing the two separate sounds of black and death into a very cohesive whole, the band has stripped away the essence of what makes both so riveting. This album lacks the bloodthirst and lethality of death metal, and also the barbarous evil of black metal, despite having the DNA strands of both flowing through its veins. Still, if you\u2019re on the prowl for some fetching melodies and well-crafted, easily digested death, there are worse options out there.<\/p>\n

Rating: 2.5\/5.0
DR: 11 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Grind to Death Records<\/a>
Websites: Official Facebook Page<\/a> | Album Bandcamp<\/a>
Releases Worldwide: September 5th, 2025<\/p>\n

\n\tGive in to Your Anger:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of my favorite things about metal is how there\u2019s always some name you\u2019ve never heard of who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[20172,4891,90595,64,63,134,50677,90596,90597,90598,136,90599,228,229,82259,90600],"class_list":{"0":"post-130320","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-2-5","9":"tag-4891","10":"tag-and-darker-it-shall-become","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-entombed","15":"tag-feral","16":"tag-grind-to-death-records","17":"tag-korp","18":"tag-music","19":"tag-necrophobic","20":"tag-review","21":"tag-reviews","22":"tag-sep25","23":"tag-swedish-death-metal"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}