SHINING VIII/Redefining Darkness Digipak CD 2012

Niklas Kvarforth has spent his career doing whatever he wants, and what he wanted on VIII/Redefining Darkness was to drag Swedish black metal somewhere deeply uncomfortable, somewhere that smells like cigarettes and Coltrane and bad decisions. It worked.

Released in 2012 and pressed again in 2024, this is the album where SHINING fully committed to their jazz-infected, suicidal avant-garde vision, blurring the line between black metal and something far harder to categorise. If you came here expecting straightforward darkness, Kvarforth would probably find that very funny. The digipak format does the album justice, a physical object for music that demands to be held, not streamed.

Full length album. Digipak CD. Swedish pressing, 2024 reissue of 2012 original. Genre: Black Metal / Avant-Garde.

Fans of: Lifelover, Deathspell Omega, Virus