- Country: Sweden
- Style: Black metal
- Label: Century Media
- Release date: 3 June 2016
A long wait, a new throat and almost no change in the war machine. That is roughly what Dark Funeral deliver on Where Shadows Forever Reign, and for most of their fans that’s exactly the point. Heljarmadr takes over the microphone here and slots in without fuss: a dry, venomous rasp that sits right on top of the blasting instead of fighting it. Nobody buys a Dark Funeral record for surprises, and nobody will find many here. What they will find is a band playing with real hunger, and riffs that feel sharper and more carefully built than the genre usually bothers with.
“Unchain My Soul” opens at full gallop, all tremolo picking and relentless blasts, but it’s the slower, grander moments that stick. “As I Ascend” stretches out over a marching, mid-paced main riff, and “Temple of Ahriman” leans hard into ritual atmosphere before tearing back into speed. “Nail Them to the Cross” is Swedish blasphemy by numbers, and gloriously so.
Daniel Bergstrand recorded the band at Dugout Studios in Uppsala, and the guitars have more body than Dark Funeral have often allowed themselves, even if the drums sometimes flatten into a grey blur when everything is going at once. The middle stretch sags a little too, with a couple of tracks that feel interchangeable, though with something as savage as “Beast Above Man” sitting near the front, it’s hard to care much. Lord Ahriman has kept this flame burning on his own terms, and this is a fierce, focused return.
Best tracks:
Unchain My Soul
As I Ascend
Temple of Ahriman
Beast Above Man
Author’s rating: 8.1/10
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