Dark Fortress - Ylem (2010)

Dark Fortress’ career has been somewhat of an uneven ride over these past sixteen years they’ve been making music. They’ve released absolutely colossal albums like their debut, ‘Tales from Eternal Dusk’ and their third album, ‘Stab Wounds.’ They also have some just plain decent recordings like their second album, ‘Profane Genocidal Creations,’ but unfortunately their previous two albums; ‘Séance’ & ‘Eidolon’ were generally boring and largely forgettable in the end.

‘Ylem’ marks a return to the massively enjoyable form that originally had me hooked on this band when I first heard them seven years ago, however Ylem is also the bands most diverse and daring record to date. Largely this album borrows a little bit from every single Dark Fortress record and blends it together to form one of the godliest creations of their career as well as one of most enormous black metal recordings you’re going to hear in 2010.

The thing that really makes Ylem interesting is that each song has its own style and you’ll find that this album makes use of many different styles of heavy metal throughout its eleven songs and seventy minute duration. The album often shifts between a faster, brutal hard hitting sound to a slower atmospheric sound, all the while each song features superb riffs/solos and absolutely fantastic vocals from Morean. On the previous album Morean sounded damn near exactly like original vocalist Azathoth, however on Ylem he uses various different vocal styles with everything ranging from his own unique blackened screams, to low death growls, whispery vocals and even epic cleanly sung parts, which sound just fantastic too.

Songs like ‘Ylem’ or ‘Satan Bled’ are fast head banging black metal songs, while ‘As the World Keels Over’ or ‘Evenfall’ are slower, atmospheric, haunting black metal masterpieces. ‘Hirudineans ‘ is the catchy fist pumping mid-paced song on the record whilst ‘The Valley’ truly pushes the album to epic territories and lastly album closer ‘Wraith’ might very well fall into the Gothic genre.

Each and every time I’ve listened to this album I’ve pretty much found myself within some darkened bliss by the end since each and every song is different even if some common characteristics exist between some of them. What matters is that through superb musicianship, excellent vocals, atmosphere and even catchiness, Dark Fortress has crafted an album for the ages. In the end this is the best release for Dark Fortress since Stab Wounds and surely a sign of even better things to come for this band. Now, having toured Europe the past couple of months I do hope they make it over here to the USA so they can conquer us with their commanding tour de force known as Ylem.