The story that lays behind this Cd (or better, how I got it) is long, painful and uninteresting, in any case, it was fully worth the wait. Being one of the best Black Metal bands still living today (and curiously from US, what a coincidence uh?) DEMONCY released this Cd all of a sudden when I was quite sure they had split up. I can’t say if I simply overlooked them or if they were actually silent for some years, since I bought the “Faustian Dawn” demo reprint several years ago already. That one was an album droning and cold as ice, evocative and completely fuzzy like the best ABRUPTUM, erosive to the ego on the long run, I kinda liked a lot its strong contrapposition to the more melodic shit that was coming out in mass at the time. “Joined in Darkness” contains once again repress of old material in the form of an unreleased 7” by the name of “The Dawn of Eternal Damnation”, filtered and reprocessed by a better mixing and remastering, and portraying a real cool layout by the undisputed Artist duo namd Riddick. This DEMONCY Cd is definitely more definite (read: clear cut) than “Faustian Dawn”, kinda more overally strong and definite. Yet, the depressive, bonechilling atmosphere comes out almost untainted thrugh the better production. Listening to this album is like breathing humid, cold air, saturated with the smell of rotting leaves, as you walk througha path of rocks glistening with moisture, all thru crumbling ruins and alien crypts in complete solitude. When the music starts to slow down into strong doomish soundscapes, it’s like falling exhausted, drained of all life, dying alone in a world that’s just shades of grey, whitout colors to warm you in the transition. Is this the mood that Black metal was supposed to recreate? The feeling of inescapable, ancient depsair? In this case, the band does the job unerringly. The vocals are the classic nasal-high pitch, although raspy and creepy not just the typical Popeye-Witch-of-the-Seven-Seas ones. Cold, cold, cold. A lifeless Black/Doom paragon.

 

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