Metal Madness: Album Review - 'Venereal Dawn' by Dark Fortress

How the heck can it be September already?

*sigh*

That would be a gloomy sigh, but right now I'm listening to the new Dark Fortress album Venereal Dawn and I just can't quite be gloomy because metal awesomeness is pouring into my ears and as much as I want to feel gloomy about how the year is passing so fast and there's a disappointing lack of awesome writing sitting on my computer, I also want to headbang and generally act all crazy and hyperactive over the music.

Um... yeah. Readers of this blog already know the Blackwood is not quite sane so the above is probably neither news not out of character.

Anyway, Dark Fortress. When I decided to attempt an album review my initial thought was that it was probably going to start with something about how I want to mash the keyboard, headbang, jump around, scream and generally act crazy, but at the same time I feel like I'm probably supposed to be intelligent and sensible about it. Then I was just going to add some links and do a bit more flailing.

So...

DARK FORTESS HAS A NEW ALBUM GUYS AND ITS TOTALLY AWESOME AND EVERYONE SHOULD LISTEN TO IT!!!

Listen on Spotify, read more about it on Encyclopaedia Metallum, or there's 'buy' links on Last.fm and through Century Media.

Sound good?

Okay, done.

*starts combing knots out of post-headbang hair*

Now it's probably time to sound intelligent and sensible or whatever.
The music is black metal... sort of. Looking around the internet, you find a lot of trailing off and adding 'sort of' to genre classifications for bands that have Morean in them. The lyrics are like some kind of bizzaro/sci-fi poetry and well worth a read all on their own.

Every time I listen to the album (and I've pretty much just had it on endless repeat since the release) I pick up new bits and pieces in the music. It's huge and complex, overwhelming in the combination of head-exploding metal and layered subtlety. I still don't quite know how to process it all, which is probably why I started my post the way I did.

Okay, that's about all I've got. Go and listen to the album already.

Links again:

Listen on Spotify, read more about it on Encyclopaedia Metallum, or there's 'buy' links on Last.fm and through Century Media.