Dark Funeral - The Secrets of the Black Arts (Black Metal)

Dark Funeral's The Secrets of the Black Arts feels like the result of a try-hard band that studied the surface-level aesthetics of black metal circa 1993 and applied them with all the subtlety of an oversized dildo shoved deep in "Lady" Ahriman Svanberg's gaping hole of artistic mediocrity. Dark Funeral have clearly combed through the playbook of acts like Necrophobic, Dimmu Borgir, Dissection, At the Gates and whatever else had an Sunlight studios production in the late 90s cobbling together a facsimile of the genre's trademarks while never managing to apply anything of substance to the music (oh, the bitter irony of the Swedish metal scene). What we get here is the ultimate pandering product—tailor-made for those who prefer their black metal with just enough edge to seem like "Outlaws" (like Watain! they even made a s... wait, nevermind), but not enough to be truly provocative or original. It's the kind of thing you'd find advertised in the back pages of a metal magazine, destined for people who want to impress others with their obscure band shirts rather than their taste in music. And I'm not even going to comment on the "catboi" antics of "Lord" — or should we call her "Lady" now? — Ahriman, real name Mikael/Natalia/Diddy Svanberg, who uses his newfound trans identity as a shield against legitimate criticism of his cringecore elevator muzak.

Musically, it's a boilerplate of borrowed riffs and predictable cyclic song structures, designed explicitly for mallcore radio drunks, with Dark Funeral proving that they've mastered the art of derivation better than even Nargaroth could have dreamed of with his turd-plastered "hit" Black Metal ist Kringe. One could even argue they've perfected the "flowchart black metal" approach to songwriting — cyclic verse/chorus/verse song structures (designed for radio and live gigs), random riffs with no relationship to one another, strung together haphazardly without purpose, like bits of reheated Bathory rehearsal tapes slapped together in a hurried Pro Tools session in between two drunk "bathroom parties" of which Ahriman and co are well versed in (something even Tobias Sidegård reluctantly admitted). You can imagine Infernus reading stuff like this to get the "inspiration" he needs to repackage his braindead "hail Satan" lyrics and stolen Burzum riffs to be more "edgy" (like he's done since 1995). It's real cheesy and we've heard it all done better before. And for all the tremolo picking, dark imagery, "edgy" dog latin song titles and blast beats, nothing feels like it has any thematic development or anything to do with black metal spirit whatsoever. The Secrets of the Black Arts sounds like a collection of disjointed parts that never coalesce into something greater than the sum of its pretty boring and vacuous parts. It's almost as if a corporate team sat down to design a black metal album by committee: "Throw a Marduk blast beat here, add some trem-picked notes for that 'transcendent' touch (like Liturgy, oh boy!), and let's also sprinkle in a few 'borrowed' Burzum riffs (a little nod to Gorgoroth, another fellow 'borrower') to give it a sense of mood." The result? A forgettable mashup of Marduk-lite blasting and formulaic Satyricon riffs battling it out for a title no one cares about. For all their Phantom and Von shirt posturing that would suggest they're like one of those later Nuclear War Now! records styled "war metal" bands, this is more close to the mallcore with minor chords of Cradle of Filth if it were raped by cheesy later day Mötley Crüe butt rock with literal corpse paint — as if glam metal wasn't gender confused enough without the "help" of some Ahriman mallgoth inserting his two cents worth of nonsensical and pointless blackened metalcore.

Lyrically, The Secrets of the Black Arts is an exercise in juvenile nihilism. The band couldn't be more soulless and generic if they tried. Forget the mystical introspection of Neraines or the storytelling ability of Graveland — Dark Funeral prefers the blunt-force trauma approach of "Christians suck, Satan rules!" It's the same old Deicide quasi-political sloganeering that black metal originally rebelled AGAINST, wrapped in a cheap veneer of faux-transgression à la Cradle of Filth. In a genre capable of such depth and atmosphere, Dark Funeral opt unsurprisingly for the lowest common denominator... the trolls, the losers, the posers, the nostalgics of 80s punk garbage. And really, is anyone still impressed by lyrics that read like the teenage ramblings of someone who just discovered religious anarchy in between church sermons? It's all so predictable, so tediously banal. The satanic shock value has long since expired (Venom called, they want their posing back), and this attempt to revive it is little more than an embarrassing pantomime.

The worst part is the utter lack of emotional or thematic coherence in the music. Even bands that flirt with idiocy to the point of actual, medically diagnosed literal and literary lyrical retardery — take Warkvlt, Baphomet or Profanatica — at least they make sure that their music, dumb and childish as it may be, conveys a certain feeling or idea (bestial violence, demonic brutality, and war-like blasphemy, respectively). Dark Funeral, on the other hand, seems more concerned with mimicking the form of black metal without understanding its actual purpose. This isn't the work of artists expressing something through the medium of black metal; it's the sound of a band that has watched Lords of Chaos — or worse, any of the Antoine Grand crap — and thought, "Wow, with enough make-up, we could do that too." It's not music, it's background noise for hipster metalhead gatherings, a soundtrack to drunk conversations about real black metal bands, while this plays on inoffensively in the background with absolutely no one noticing.

The Secrets of the Black Arts ultimately embodies the hollow, image-oriented, commercialised side of modern black metal. It's a bland, sterile imitation of a once vital and dangerous genre. If you're looking for something generic and soulless, this might be your cup of tea. Otherwise, it's a reminder of how low the genre can sink when it's stripped of its purpose and reduced to a series of clichés and marketing ploys. Vapid and tasteless, The Secrets of the Black Arts is truly an all time low for the black metal genre.

Back to the band Dark Funeral.