Album Review: Dark Funeral - Where Shadows Forever Reign

Dark Funeral
Where Shadows Forever Reign
(Century Media)

Unleashed from the cosmic nether comes the new and highly anticipated Dark Funeral album Where Shadows Forever Reign.

A legacy in black metal as genuine and mighty as Dark Funeral's is difficult to achieve. In a genre that often prides itself on being unpopular, and usually loses itself within a heap of stereotypes, Dark Funeral have burned their way to the top of extreme metal without being fake - ever.

Where Shadows Forever Reign is a thick cloud of terror pushing against the listener. The fear is real. Something terrible is happening in the atmosphere, and Dark Funeral are once again on top of it. The thickness comes from an incredibly produced sound made over at Dugout Studios in Sweden. The primal mood of a true black metal album was not betrayed by the attentive ears of Lord Ahriman and producer Daniel Bergstrand (In Flames, Behemoth, Dimmu Borgir). Lord Ahriman and Chaq Mol bury the listener in an unrelenting cadence of tortured riffs that dance around the blistering drumming of Dominator, while singer Heljarmadr recites the prophetic lyrics of eternal night through nine tracks of elite black metal.

Dark Funeral fans have waited years for this album, and the band has answered their summoning call with one of their finest albums in Where Darkness Forever Reign.