IN MALICE'S WAKE — The Profound Darkness as reviewed by Mark J. " The Profound Darkness deserves your undivided attention"

 IN MALICE'S WAKE — The Profound Darkness (Self-Released)

Twenty-five years. Five records. Zero label. That's the arithmetic of In Malice's Wake, and it says everything you need to know about who these men are and why 

The Melbourne death-thrash institution returns in 2026 with their fifth full-length, and the first thing that hits you — apart from the obvious, which is that the riffs are ferocious — is the shift in subject matter. The Blindness of Faith (2020) trained its crosshairs on religious manipulation, a worthy target that the band flogged with some conviction but, truthfully, a little more song than was necessary. The Profound Darkness is leaner. It is also bleaker, more interior, and in the best possible way, more personal. This is a record about death — not death as genre theatre, not death as edgy packaging, but death as the one non-negotiable reality that every one of us is moving towards, whether we like it or not.

"He who sees the world beyond is forever haunted." That's the line that opens Beyond Death and it functions as a mission statement. IMW aren't interested in cartoonish morbidity here. There's a philosophical weight to The Profound Darkness that bands twice their profile rarely attempt. Nine tracks, just under forty minutes. No fat. Every song earns its place and gets out before outstaying its welcome.

The musicianship is staggering, particularly if you've been following this band through the years. Shaun Farrugia and Leigh Bartley — twelve years now as a guitar partnership, Bartley also currently burning it up in Harlott — play with the kind of locked-in ferocity that only comes from that kind of long familiarity. It's not just speed or technique, though both are present in abundance. It's the instinct. The way By Tongues of Demons builds and then suddenly the guitars go dive-bombing straight into your skull and you're on your feet before you even know it. That moment isn't engineered. It's the product of two players who know each other's moves in their sleep.

Mark Farrugia's drumming sits in a strange and admirable category — he plays to the song rather than to himself, which sounds like it should be a given but is increasingly rare. The kit work on The Great Purifier and Beyond Death is nimble where it needs to be brutal, and brutally precise where lesser players would be flailing. Karl Watterson on bass holds the low end alongside him with a kind of grinding weight that doesn't call attention to itself but would be catastrophically missed if it weren't there.

Slayer and Sepultura are the obvious reference points, and the band has never pretended otherwise. Those chromatic riff patterns, the Lombardo-adjacent kick work, the sheer velocity of the attack — it's all there and it's not apologising for any of it. But The Profound Darkness is not a nostalgia project. The Last Song introduces synths — briefly, tastefully, effectively — and the Dissection-inflected tremolo leads in The Darkness Below Us push into genuinely blackened territory. The guitar solos throughout are deliberately brief, almost impatient. IMW can clearly shred whenever they want. The choice to cut themselves short is a compositional decision, not a limitation. It keeps the record focused. Keeps you hungry.

Numb to Paradise is the one that lodges deepest. The way they run through the gears on that track — controlled demolition, every escalation earned — is the kind of moment that reminds you what thrash at its most purposeful sounds like when it's not trying to be anything other than itself. It's violent music made by people who understand violence as a structural tool rather than just an effect.

Produced, mixed by Chris Themelco at Monolith Studio right here in Melbourne, mastered by Plec Johansson at Panic Room Mastering — the record sounds exactly as it should. Dense, punishing, no unnecessary gloss. Shaun Farrugia designed the artwork too. Self-released. Self-contained. That matters. There's an integrity to a band this good operating entirely on their own terms after twenty-five years.

If The Profound Darkness has a limitation, it's that the throttle rarely comes down enough for the thematic darkness to fully breathe. The philosophical premise — death as unknowable, as paralysing, as the one horizon that won't move — occasionally gets slightly outrun by the pure kinetic energy of the execution. The dread is implied more than inhabited. But that's a quibble about ceiling height when the floor itself is this solid.

Twenty-five years in, In Malice's Wake have made their most focused record and one of the best extreme metal albums out of this country in recent memory. They're not chasing anything. They don't need to. This is what they are — and what they are is formidable.

The Profound Darkness is out now. Self-released. Go find it.

https://www.inmaliceswake.com/

They always have great merch and sick bundles, so don't fuck about!!!!

and don't miss the album launch:

https://www.facebook.com/events/982750354146782