Dark Fortress – Eidolon
Century Media - CD9976582 - 25 Feb 2008
By Brandon Peters
Dark Fortress is a band that keeps cropping up in black metal circles; the band plays black metal with a hint of heavy metal.
On this album they use keys to enhance parts of their songs, and they keep it to a minimal and use it very nicely. The band has a lot of great ideas throughout the album, but it lacks conformity and comes out really predictable. The mediocrity of this album comes from expecting to hear great things from the album after a few listens, then finding out that there isn’t anything there. They have a lot of awesome riffs that come out and force you to headbang and choruses that are chant worthy; however, they just lead to nothing or fall to useless repetition. A few of the songs, like
‘The Silver Gate’ and
‘No Longer Human’ have some absolutely stunning parts, but by the time the songs are finishing the song loses the listener with lackluster song writing. Repetition can be a great tool for a black metal band, but Dark Fortress doesn’t quite utilize it to make much of an atmosphere. The song writing of this album is actually fairly solid, but isn’t bringing anything new to the table and some slight alterations to some of the songs could make this album quite good. I think the album is too song oriented and doesn’t quite hit me with an atmosphere to keep on listening
This album has made me want to check out their earlier material to see if their song writing and ideas are put together better; however, this is a fun and interesting listen for a few listens, but then it falls into mediocrity.
Official Dark Fortress Website
Official Dark Fortress Myspace
Official Century Media Website
