Dark Funeral - Dark Funeral
Review: Clumsy emulation of the greats currently reigning and the ability to make majestic experience from basic melodic riffing and peristaltic or urgent motion, the technique of this Dark Funeral release is not as important as the acknowledgment that it is the only darkly spirited album from this band and the only in which knowledge of song construction is not borrowed wholly from heavy metal bands. Similar to the more nihilistic work from the former band of guitarist Blackmoon, Necrophobic, songs follow an inner pace and unite a complex series of screamingly simple riffs in narrative toward amateurish concepts of Satan and "Evil."
When the humor subsides, some recognize this EP as a work of pure Swedish metal in its fusion of extreme outside material with the dreamlike fantasyland of epic heavy metal, and this in emerging on the metal side of the fusion exceeds later regressive works. If every note played were heard as its ripples in a pond, this release would be the study of gently and unobtrusively forming crosshatches of motion that eventually fade into uniformity. In this a clarity of periodistic chaos emerges in these often rough assemblies of riffing, and in clarity of early intent this release achieves a transfer of mood from creators to listener through synchronicity in intent expressed through simultaneous rhythmic and tonal change.
Primitive blasphemy and mindless hatred are tempered by the soaring melodies and the updrafts of theme which consume them, whisked them into coils of sound suddenly superseded by a resurrection of fundamental direction. Open melodies surging into the stream of the collected phenemona they have induced fight for uniqueness before being washed into a universal death desire which is the tone-centric deliverance to these serrated, rugged, abrasive riff clusters. The sustained wave motion reducing intensity to ambient dissonance over barebones drumming that makes this distinctive, in reaching the core of melody by way of theme to each song, delivers the truest statement in metal terms of what is here offered.
While disadvantaged mightily by its archaic theory this release remains on the playlist for listenability and energy converted to reducing, vigorous slicing motions of tone at the resounding vibration of a highspeed pace. Sonorous beauty balanced by primal regression and erupting detours into dark moods give it a heart, but its powerful liquid riffs direct it to a being. This re-release is remastered with covers of two Bathory songs now included.