Dark Funeral - Angelus Exuro pro Eternus (2009)

Along time has passed since “The Secrets of the Black Arts” and the band seems to not be slowing down at all. Having waiting for four years to the release of “Angelus Exuro pro Eternus”, I must say that while I do like this album a lot and it’s one of the best of the year, I have a mixed opinion that Dark Funeral shows signs of going nowhere with their music, only following a straight line and releasing ‘more of the same’.

While I think that releasing ‘more of the same’ is not bad if you have a good sound and a good band (like Epica, My Dying Bride, etc), but in the Black Metal world you get dethroned so easily if you do not adapt to the newer times and release something more dynamic (or an improvement of your ‘more of the same’ sound).

In 2009 Gorgoroth have released what is probably their best album to date, Immortal released an improved version of ‘more of the same’, and other bands did their jobs as well. How do I rate Dark Funeral’s newest album?, I think it’s around the middle of the pack. While the album is very brutal and well executed I think I was expecting something a bit different from them, not a catastrophe like 1349’s terrible attempt at changing their face, but something along the lines of “Wormwood” from Marduk. Keeping your own band’s identity and improving on their sound is what Marduk did and it worked quite fine for them, but Dark Funeral still sounds the same, just with a better production.

Now after my 2 cents, I will go over the music of “Angelus Exuro pro Eternus”. The replacement of Matte Modin goes basically un-noticed since Nils Fjellström does an even better behind the drum set, creating total drumming devastation and helped by the album’s production the drums sound like the come straight from hell.

Emperor Magus Caligula does another super job handling the shrieks of pain and puts up a great performance through the whole album; he is one of my favorite curent BM vocalists alongside Pest from Gorgoroth. As for the guitar work you know what you can expect from Dark Funeral, using their signature twin guitar approach they blow away most kiddies trying to play BM in the first song. All the riffing is very repetitive (very traditional BM in my opinion) but since it’s so intense and very well rounded with the bestial drumming, it creates a very heavy sound. As for the bass guitar, wait there is a bass guitar in this album?.. just joking, you can still hear it if you pay very close attention but it’s drowned by the overall mix of the album.

As you can read, if this was a release by a no-name band, it would be almost a 100 points album. However, since we are talking about Dark Funeral here, I was expecting a bit more from them. DO NOT get put off, since if you are a BM fan this album MUST exist in you collection since it’s very brutal and well written, just don’t expect anything original or different than Dark Funeral’s previous albums

Release: January 26, 2010

Country: Sweden