DARKFUNERAL

 

 

In Sweden there is always been a dualism between them and Marduk and I will give a final sentence, the overall quality of the bands releases has been similar till ’99, the main difference is the Marduk quantity of releases and the Dark Funeral long “rests”.
Dark Funeral started in 1994 with a very interesting self-titled mini-album, a black-metal dark-hymn of evilness created by a barrage of guitars and a drums-assault. The mix didn’t excite me too much ‘cause the lack or sharpness that the typical black metal sound needs. Getting lost that fact the Swedish created was something bloody new, only a bit influenced by the post-Deathcrush Mayhem’s sound, but surely original. Together with Marduk, the Nechropobic’s mastermind Blackmoon and Lord Arhiman were giving a new key to black metal, more aggressive and intense, expressing the misanthropy in a different way from the Norwegian darkness and evilness. For their intensity they were more similar to the Norwegian exception Immortal’s holocaust metal, but with a melodic conception slightly different, in connection with the melodic death black metal of Unanimated and Dissection.

The milestone debut “The Secrets of the Black Arts” (Vote 10) is a symphonic-like made music without a single keyboard line, a monument of hate, darkness, misanthropy. The Themgoroth voice seems to come from the infernal depths, the drums are a heartless attach and there is a general apocalyptic aura in every song. The black energy of that release is incredible, a battle already won after the first minute of massacre. The melodic approach is involved in a massive storm of guitars, like blood falling from the sky. This is a majestic hymn to the one with horns, a battle fought without mercy, after that there are only echoes of death. The DarkFuneral of “The Secrets”sound is aggressive but with an incredible evocative power, like few other albums.

After tree long years, in 1998, here comes “Vobiscum Satanas” (Vote 9.5), an icy and more brutal version of the DarkFuneral’s music. The drum is become a weapon of mass-massacre, an holocaust of violence, the guitars have an awesome black metal production, another time a mighty symphony to the devil, to an apocalyptic age of sufferance, of death without compromises. There was been important line-up changes between the debut and that opus, but everything worked perfectly, the new singer, Emperor Caligula, made a superb voice-performance, and the drummer performed better the previous one. With “Vobiscum…” an icy-storm, like in the Immortal’s masterpiece “Pure Holocaust”, destroyed everything around. The 2000 mcd “Teach Children To Worship Satan” wasn’t much more then a song that appeared on the next album, and 4 cover songs (Mayhem, Slayer) mostly well played.

 

The long awaited “Diabolus Interium” (Vote 8) has arrived in 2001, and hasn’t impressed me like “Vobiscum…”. The major difference is probably the production, that isn’t so cold and sharp like in the last hymn, but probably the main reason is a less compact album, made of great songs but also of fair ones. There isn’t the obvious excellence of the previous album, nobody ask to Arhiman & co. to change their style but sometimes is clear a certain repetitiveness, like the Ancient involution on “The Halls of Eternity”. Fortunately Dark Funeral are also able to play great songs but, apart from the fantastic “An Apprentice of Satan”, they are very far from what they are able to do. The musical solutions are very similar to their past works but almost everytime without the same misanthropic mysticism…I hope that in the future they will have the opportunity to come back to their standards.

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