RELEASE REVIEW: Dark Funeral – Angelus Exuro pro Eternus (Regain/Riot)

Dark Funeral come blasting out of the blackness with their latest offering. It’s a movement up and forwards; it’s more technical and varied; and it’s also very, very addictive.

An uncompromising release, Dark Funeral‘s Angelus Exuro pro Eternus kicks off at full speed with The end of human race. It’s a feast of minor chords and catchy rhythms. Built on a mid-paced harmonic progression, the first tracks moves into The birth of the vampiir with ease. The pace of track two slows down just over a minute in and provides the necessary variation for the increasing speed of it to recapture your attention. The band manages to keep your attention by virtue of its use of harmonic variation, nicely placed tempo change, and a cinematic drama that underlies Dark Funeral’s dense and intense wall of sound.

The third track, Stigmata, is not musically vastly different – some changes in key and tempo are highlights – but it’s the hypnotic, repetitious intonation of the word ‘stigmata’ in this track that is its selling point.

And so the release goes on. One of the things that is so gripping for me with Dark Funeral’s particular brand of black metal is the band’s attention to composition. You might have a fairly constant and continuous – some would say not particularly unique or interesting – base of percussion, but… READ MORE –>