Origin of Darkness - The Living Darkness (2010)

   Such as Catacombs, Origin of Darkness was also a short lived one man band of Mr Xathagorra Mlandroth alias John del Russi, who's known about playing on all instruments in all of his projects.
  The style of these projects are mostly mixing funeral and death/doom, but earlier he played raw black metal too. There are plenty of things in common such as the concept of creating the darkest possible tone, and the returning Lovecraft reference. Still, thanks to Mr Russi's productiveness, they doesn't sound like the same, and it's easy to find the differences. Compared to Catacombs, Origin of Darkness was more intense and the themes had main role instead of the strong atmosphere, that's almost completely gone. In the songs he focused on a simple, but catchy leading melody, that's repetitively returning and strictly holding the songs together. Higher toned ominous themes are completing the heavy riffs with also repetitive assistance. These are also the only atmospheric elements left, and to pair them with the obscure, rumbling main themes was an excellent solution. The sound turned closer to death metal, therefore the main effect is more unfriendly. The sound and the song structures together are strongly reminding to the style of Finnish death metal, but this approach of death/doom and funeral doom is also not far from Esoteric. If Catacombs was like levitating endlessly in some amorphous obscure terror, than Origin of Darkness is like a slow but certain devastating breakout from that idle state.