Dark Funeral have been around since the early '90s and haven't changed a bit in that time. Sure, there's been membership turnover, but musically, they're still cranking out the same blastbeats and buzzsaw guitar riffs, and
Emperor Magus Caligula (vocalist since 1995) is croaking out the same blasphemous verses, as ever. Indeed, if one were to write a stereotypical black metal band into a Hollywood screenplay,
Dark Funeral would be it -- they've got the corpse paint, the leather 'n' spikes, the songs about Satan…and that's all they've got. Not one original idea has ever passed through the minds of these dudes. There are some slight tempo variations on Angelus Exuro Pro Eternus; "My Funeral" is more akin to a death march than a sprint, for example. But there are no astonishing displays of instrumental technique to be heard, nor are their any interesting lyrical concepts expressed, something even the head-down blast-masters in
Marduk have embraced in recent years.
Dark Funeral are lowest-common-denominator black metal, and to the extent that they have a devoted fan base, this album will please those people. But anyone else who comes across this disc is likely to toss it aside quickly in favor of something more original.