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Dark Funeral: Angelus Exuro Pro Eternus Black Metal Regain Records November 18th, 2009
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Review
In the span of upwards of fifteen years, Angelus Exuro Pro Eternus is only Dark Funeral's fifth full length studio effort. Over the years the band has changed, evolved, and dabbled with various musical ideas in order to create a Black Metal sound that fans of the style would openly embrace. It seems that recently, though, the band has really been putting emphasis on the sound of what many call the "third wave" of Black Metal. Luckily, Dark Funeral was able to sit down and really focus on a way to bring insane blast beats, and not have every song sound exactly the same...except for the drums. Angelus Exuro Pro Eternus is an impeccable release, don't read this review as if it's one of the worst Black Metal has to offer. The music is a flat out assault on your ears, with some great guitar work that comes at you in a haunting, as well as an intense, non-stop ride, with varying vocal levels that really offer some great variances between the songs. "Stigmata" is a perfect example of it with it's haunting guitar solo's and eerie hooks during the song's verses, all staying within the same structure of the song and offering a few change ups in the pace of the song as well. The only problem, though, is that a vast majority of the tracks on here feature the exact same drums: A concentration on specific cymbols or snares while the bass kicks are hammered away in a machine gun-like manner. "My Funeral" is easily one of the best tracks on the release, as well as the one song on here that stands out the most due to how slow the song goes, and the fact that Dark Funeral doesn't need to rely on blast beats for five minutes to create a heavy, soul crushing track. It's about this time that the album starts to show a bit of variety in the music with "Demons Of Five" following in the footsteps of the slower paced music, as well as the track "In My Dreams", which just has some really depressive sounding guitar work, and a very dark atmosphere all around from start to finish. While the track may be slower like "My Funeral", it lacks the real bite that track possessed, and comes off a bland, slower version of any of the fast paced machine gun assaults that appear on here. Even the chorus to the track "Declaration Of Hate" is more entertaining then that song, but then again the guitars during that chorus are pretty nice against the song's overall infectious intensity. Through it all, Angelus Exuro Pro Eternus is an intense album that suffers from the typical ailments that Black Metal of this calibur usually suffers. However, Dark Funeral is able to change things up a bit through the album, and draw some of the attention away from the repetative recycled drumming, and brings more to the mix with slower songs to really show that the band is not a one-trick act like some bands in this style have started to become. Sure, after a couple listens much of the album will grow redundant with how similar the structures of everything are to one another, but it's the fact that the band is able to pull off such a heavy album that does show variety in their writing instead of sticking to one path for every single song gives hope for this "wave" of the style after all.
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