I love bands with album titles that read like sentences from a dark tome of ritual summoning. You know, the type you find in the cellar of an abandoned cabin in the woods. "Mara Comes and Darkness Shall Reign" is like that. The second album from the Atmospheric Black Metal duo SCHREIGARM from Neuss, Germany was released via Purity Through Fire on September 12, 2025. Like so many albums of its ilk, it is soothing and unnerving all at once. The perfect album to sip your absinthe to while contemplating the mysteries of pagan mysticism.  

In the band's words, the album "explores the multifaceted nature of darkness—both internal and cosmic" and musically, "it expands the band's signature style, merging atmospheric black metal with melodic and post-black elements. The result is a richly textured soundscape of haunting beauty, featuring ritualistic passages, soaring melodic solos, and a dynamic interplay of vocal contrasts." And while you might expect an album that invokes Mara to be all about darkness and destruction, the album is also about creativity and rebirth—all of which can come through darkness.

"Mara Comes and Darkness Shall Reign" is the type of album to be experienced straight through as opposed to plucking out a track here and there or via shuffle. With that said, it's hard to pick out standout tracks. Several of my favorites are "Darkness Shall Reign" with its epic and triumphant energy; "Through Time, Death and the Beast Within," which has a melodic tremolo treatment that is mesmerizing but also coupled with heavy riffage and spellbinding acoustic moments; and, of course, there is "Mara Comes," a disquieting number featuring the queen of our nightmares. I also really dug "Winds of the Ancient Pantheons" which is quintessential SCHREIGARM through and through and "Whispers of the Blackened Woods" with its lush acoustic intro and sinister, stairstep melody.

There are parts of "Mara Comes and Darkness Shall Reign" that positively terrify me, and other parts that just soothe the hell out of me (no pun intended). Oddly, there are times when those two aspects intersect . . . and that's the dark magic of well-crafted Atmospheric Black Metal.