2/19/2023 0 Comments Dark fortress luciform![]() I don’t mind them breaking loose from their black metal beginnings but Venereal Dawn is a half-baked and confused album by a band that seemingly wants to be Triptykon, Opeth and something like Ephel Duath all at once, with no regard paid to structure and flow. It’s a welcome, albeit brief, return to form on an album that seems to be deliberately formless and, together with the thrashy riffs and subtle yet brooding keyboards of “Luciform,” represents the album’s sole moment of structural unity and purpose. As if to throw us a bone just as the album starts winding down, they finally break out some speed and the faintest sense of tonal dissonance on “Odem,” which actually qualifies as a black metal song that hearkens back to both the visceral attack of Stabwounds and the more atmospheric approach of Ylem. The transitions clash instead of cooperate and because the instruments don’t speak to one another the album, as a whole, fails to speak to the listener. None of the riffs and melodies are particularly engaging and the haphazard way they jump between different instrumental passages is extremely problematic. There is some groove evident on “Betrayal and Vengeance,” a rough outline of a Triptykon song on “Chrysalis” and “The Deep” consists of little more than laboured acoustic strumming and warbled whispering. The incongruence, not just between the individual instruments but also between the various sections within the songs, results in compositional paralysis that effectively wipes out the initial two thirds of the album. Venereal Dawn would’ve been a solid album were it not for the worrying lack of unity between its various components. There is a sense of menace lurking somewhere in the background but it’s largely secluded and the structural weirdness of the songs preclude it from ever coming to the fore. Barring the blasting opening strains of “I am the Jigsaw of a Mad God” things are stuck in an unflinching mid-tempo, Florian “narrates” more than he growls and the riffs stutter along with no discernible sense of focus. It’s just as well I’m not a betting man then, because they violently yank the rug out from underneath you as soon as those peculiar Opeth-ian melodies (think a mix of “The Drapery Falls” and “Dirge for November”) and momentum-killing stop/go riffs start swirling around on “Lloigor,” and it’s not until the seventh track (“Odem”) that a sense of footing is regained. Sure, the 11-minute duration and resolute lack of speed of the title track are sure to raise some eyebrows, but it’s not terribly different from some of Ylem’s more sombre moments. Well, that’s the $666,000 question, isn’t it? If I were a betting man I’d say that all this hoopla about change, revolution and whatnot is just poppycock. An album that sees them transition into what, I hear you ask… Lest we get too pedantic about pigeonholing, let’s just go ahead and view Venereal Dawn as the typical transitional album. Venereal Dawn could be labelled as a progressive metal album but seeing as though many of its more leftfield moments seem to have their genesis in Opeth’s late 90s/early 00s material, one could also argue that that, if anything, it’s a regressive metal album. ![]() They are a melodic black metal band that, on this album at least, are neither melodic nor particularly ‘black’. Beloved in equal measure by fans of traditional and more melodic variants of black metal alike, this German act’s current career trajectory represents a bit of a conundrum – they are several things and at the same time they are not. In some ways Venereal Dawn represents a continuation of the slightly more off-kilter elements Dark Fortress started exploring on Ylem, yet in many ways this new album, their first in four years, is more a case of revolution than evolution. ![]() Turns out this fortress isn’t that impenetrable after all…
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