It’s
2016 and words hurt, people need safe spaces because someone talking about
rape, terrorism or Satanism “triggers” them. Well, Satanism shouldn’t really be
in this list but for whatever reason the idea freaks people out, not that Dark
Funeral seem to care one bit. Dark Funeral are back and it’s been too long,
releasing through Century Media Records, “Where Shadows Forever Reign” is
bringing Black Metal back to the forefront of the Metal Scene now that Abbath’s
release has lost its steam. Let’s get into some evil sounding tunes and
“trigger” some kids who shouldn’t even be allowed on the internet, or maybe we
will make them smarten up and toughen up with some good ol’ Black Metal.
Opening
with the track “Unchain My Soul” I constantly find the intro to this song
interesting, the opening riff and the chorus riff are practically the same with
the difference being that in the intro guitarists Lord Ahriman and Chaq Mol are
playing sustained notes over Dominator’s blast beats which is slightly out of
place, while during the chorus they are playing at a much higher tempo to keep
pace with the blasts. While this song doesn’t have too much of a change to its
sound throughout, it’s a great opening track to get the blood pumping and get
you ready for the destructive power known as Dark Funeral.
“Beast
Above Man” is a couple tracks down and contains a consistent tempo to the first
two songs, the speed is intense and Heljamadr sounds evil at every point in
this album. The fact that i can actually generally understand Heljamadr makes
his vocals all that more intense, hearing the Satanic lyrics, especially in
this song, like “I’ll turn your crosses upside down and burn your temple to the
ground” and others such as eating the victims flesh and slitting their wrists,
all only in the first couple minutes of the song. While this album is full of
evil, it is Black Metal after all, this is just the beginning.
Next,
let’s talk about the two singles that were released, “Nail Them To The Cross”
which is by far the strongest song on this album, as well as the closing and
title track “Where Shadows Forever Reign”. The former see’s the band at it’s
more destructive, outside of the high speeds we are use to, the chorus slows
down immensely to create a much more evil sound in contrast while you hear
Heljamadr’s vocals drop to a crazy low as he chants out “Nail them to the
cross”. This is fist pumped, head banging Black Metal that leads perfectly into
the end of the album. The slow down once the verse kicks in, in “Where Shadows Forever
Reign” this song has a lot of changes to its tempo, while none are very drastic
the song does speed up and slow down quite a bit fairly often. The only strange
choice about this song I really noticed was when it cuts back into the chorus,
sort of out of nowhere, maybe an extra bar of instrumental would have made it
seem less strange, but what do I know?
In the
end, this is a band that’s been around for two decades, a band that knows the
Black Metal scene and is ready to rule it. Dark Funeral consistently release
top tier Black Metal and even with that in mind, this is probably their
strongest release to date. It’s faster, the lyrics are more evil and contain
far more imagery, the entire band has raised the bar for any Black Metal
release this year, so it’s your turn bands, who will compete with Dark Funeral?
Can anyone compete with them? “Where Shadows Forever Reign” will go down as the
best of the best in 21st century Black Metal, guess it only makes sense it’s a
release on Century Media then.
85/100
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