Dark Funeral - We Are the Apocalypse (Metalcore)

Dark Funeral's We Are the Apocalypse feels like a perfect storm of missed opportunities and baffling choices, the kind of album that makes you wonder if the band is more committed to their image than to the music itself. One glance at the band's latest promo shot inside the album cover should tell you everything: too much influence from the likes of Cradle of Filth, Dimmu Borgir, Evanescence, and even Arch Enemy. Yes, we've reached a point where Watain's pseudo-black deathcore seems to have been a creative influence. Naturally, the result is that unmistakable "retro" aesthetic, which, in this context, directly translates to "sounds like garbage."

With We Are the Apocalypse, Dark Funeral has fully embraced a formula of samples, over-processed vocals, and occasional programmed drums that give the entire album a strange, arena rock vibe — if arena rock were mixed with video game music and MIDI percussion. Combine that with song structures that seem haphazard at best, and lyrics that read like the "occult" section of a Hot Topic clearance sale, and you've got what is likely one of the most embarrassing releases Century Media has ever churned out. Lines like "The Tears of Satan Fall From Hell" and "I Am The Triangle God And The Fallen Angel of Satan" feel like they were crafted specifically to make even the most hardened black metal fans cringe.

Musically, We Are the Apocalypse is about as sterile and inoffensive as black metal gets. Everything from the production to the actual music itself feels like it was cobbled together by a group of musicians still figuring out what black metal even is. The album kicks off with Nightfall, which is so devoid of menace, malice, or even a halfway memorable melody that it's a contender for the most forgettable track on the record. The sheer lack of any emotional or musical impact makes one question how this even passed as black metal. Even as someone who can appreciate certain forms of modern "metalcore-lite" black metal (think: Enslaved, Ulver, or even Nargaroth), Dark Funeral on the other hand is still and always an automatic skip.

When the band released Let the Devil In as the lead single, they effectively set the tone for the rest of the album — one that screams "low effort" from start to finish. Listening to this track, it becomes clear that any hope of a serious black metal release was abandoned the moment the band hit the record button on what is likely the band's cellphone. Lord Ahriman offers up some of the most uninspired, boring riffs I've ever heard on a black metal album, and you can almost picture him recording them in his bedroom studio in between his infamous bathroom parties of male on male action with Infernus of Gorgoroth (another scenester poser clown, if there ever was one). How this half-baked album ended up in the catalog of Century Media is anyone's guess, but the lack of effort is palpable.

The reality is, when your music is so lackluster that Dimmu Borgir starts to sound good by comparison, it's time to take a serious look in the mirror. Dark Funeral seems insistent on clinging to their place in the black metal scene, yet they can't even deliver on the basic tenets of the genre — lyrically, conceptually, or technically. This sounds EVEN WORSE than their atrocious debut The Secrets of the Black Arts. I guess David Parland of Necrophobic was really the "brains" (although the term implies intelligence) of Dark Funeral. What we're left with is an album that's all image, no substance. Pure image over sound elevator music with programmed drum beats. We Are the Apocalypse is a masterclass in mediocrity and a reminder that black metal should never be this soulless or this boring. Replace with Unholy War Metal for some real demonic black metal cooking.

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