Back in 2010 (OMG 5 years ago…) I featured a band named Questioner on my list. They were there because they managed to show a mastery of several different styles of extreme metal while keeping everything cohesive and organic. They were a bandcamp discovery, a product of looking through pages and pages of new releases by new bands that have near zero recognition in the scene. Finding and appreciating Dark by Protolith was a very similar experience. They’re a modest, unsigned outfit showcasing a remarkably diverse flavor of extreme metal. This is a progressive sort of blackened death metal, slightly reminiscent of Withered, but with more space in the mix, more wandering in the compositions. I say wandering but never without purpose, feeling more along the lines of introspection eventually resolved with big memorable riffage. This is a skill Opeth perfected a long time ago, but very few bands have managed to be so effective with it since. Protolith may just be a one-hitter of a band just like Questioner, never to be heard from again, but this album is worthy of attention as one of the best of 2015.
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