Album Review: Lucifer’s Dungeon – The Dark Army Raises (GrimmDistribution)

The debut album from Russian band, Lucifer’s Dungeon has been a long time coming seeing as they where founded in 2008. Recorded in February 2017, The Dark Army Raises is out May 7th 2017 via GrimmDistribution.

15 songs combining raw black metal & ambient sounds, The Dark Army Raises is a spectacular album that continues a trend this year of excellent & imaginative blackened metal sounds.

The haunting & oppressive intro, Dungeon sounds like the start of a dark & dangerous journey. It sets up the killer opening riffs of Unconscious Faith perfectly. A song that will put the widest grin on even the most ardent of old-school black metal fans. It has some seriously head-banging meat to its bones with vocals ripped directly out of Hell’s mouth.

There is so much to love about the early parts of The Dark Army Raises. The way each song flows perfectly in the other, the rhythmic drumming, the mouth-watering riffs…each song is just constant pleasure for the ears. It’s raw, particularly in the vocals but maintains a decent level of production that makes sure every note stands out.

Lucifer’s Dungeon know how to write song intros & the bass heavy start to War is just as thrilling as everything that came before. As well as that, War is one of the most riff heavy tracks. A spectacular song on a spectacular first half of an album.

The Last Day of Life offers some time to breathe from the harder sounding metal. sounding like the soundtrack to an Italian 80’s horror movie. It’s a stunning interlude that adds to the overall story feel of The Dark Army Raises.

The latter half of the album has a number of songs that continue that style such III Lifes Of Dark Angel & The Secret. The latter of the two is a gorgeous violin & piano melody that will leave you open-mouthed in just how imaginative it sounds. Something that can be attributed to the entire album as a whole. It’s a mix of blackened metal & these horror movie soundtrack style tunes, utterly fascinating.

Unfortunately it does have the occasional blip. Burn Your Dogma is the rawest sounding track on the album & never really gets going while Darkness is a good slab of meaty black metal but the worry begins to set in that they may have played their best hand already. The excellence that comes elsewhere though more than makes up for these.

The Dark Army Raises finishes with a triple header of The Answer, Beyond Good and Evil & Outro. Finishing things off with both beauty, wonder & head-bangingly great metal. It’s a satisfying finish to an album that never feels like it’s dragging considering it’s 58 minutes long.

Absolutely fantastic.

Lucifer’s Dungeon – The Dark Army Raises Full Track Listing:

1. Dungeon (Intro)
2. Unconcious Faith
3. The Dark Army Raises
4. War
5. The Last Day Of Life
6. Burn Your Dogma
7. III Lifes Of Dark Angel
8. My Eyes
9. Destruction
10. Darkness
11. The Forest
12. The Secret
13. The Answer
14. Beyond Good And Evil
15. Outro

You can order The Dark Army Raises over on Lucifer’s Dungeon’s Bandcamp as well as on GrimmDistribution’s Bandcamp. Check out the band over on Facebook & the label on Facebook.