UMUR
"...for Thine Is the Darkness" is the 3rd full-length studio album by Spanish, Barcelona based death metal act Graveyard. The album was released through War Anthem Records in April 2016. It´s been 3 years since the release of "The Sea Grave (2013)", but Graveyard have released quite a few splits and "The Coffin Years (2015)" compilation in the meantime.
The music on "...for Thine Is the Darkness" is old school death metal with both thrash- and doom metal leanings. The album features 17 tracks and a full playing time of 43:04 minutes, but half of the tracks on the album are short atmospheric intros to the more "regular" length tracks (and there´s a short outro to the album too). So in reality there are only 8 regular length tracks featured on the album. The atmosphere enhancing short tracks work well with the rest of the material. In fact the album is filled to the brim with quality old school death metal tracks.
Highlights include "The Mighty Columns of Irem" (check out the last minute of the song, which features atmosphere enhancing keyboards in the vein of Type O Negative) and the brutal grooving "Hidden Amidst the Stars", but there´s nothing sub par on the album. While the music is generally relatively simple Graveyard always manage to incorporate little details to make the tracks interesting. For example an acoustic guitar section here, and an atmophere enhancing keyboard section there.
"...for Thine Is the Darkness" is a well produced album, featuring a raw and organic, yet detailed sound, which suits the material perfectly. Graveyard are well playing too, and although you won´t hear much on "...for Thine Is the Darkness" that you haven´t heard before in another shape or form on other old school death metal releases, they do what they do so well, that a 4 star (80%) rating is fully deserved.