The stars seem to be drifting into alignment for Dødsfall at the moment. I say this not only because I’m still reeling from the impact of the excellent Skygge album Antiqua Ignis last month, which featured Dødsfall vocalist Adramelech. Okay Antiqua Ignis was a pretty special release – full-on and firing off its double barrels in a few random directions as it went on its hate fuelled rampage. Dødsfall, on the other hand, is more firmly centre
-ground black metal. Aggressive, orthodox and chilling to the bone – albeit with a flare for combining all that with a combustible song writing style. It was all more than evident on their last release Djevelens Evangelie. In fact, the band – basically a project of Moonlight guitarist and vocalist Ishtar – have been a reliable staple of the Scandinavian black metal scene over the past few years after putting out an album more or less every year since 2011.
They’ve now signed to Osmose and their black star seems to be in its ascendancy. With Marduk’s Devo Andersson still involved in mastering and recording and with mixing this time round done at Tomas Skogsberg’s Sunlight Studios for the first time, there seems to be a growing momentum that now only needs to be backed up by producing the festering goods for another outing. Luckily, they have seized the opportunity. I’m not entirely convinced Kaosmakt topples 2013’s darker Djevelens Evangelie, But it manages to feed its intense rage with the same energy drawn directly from the second wave of black metal with scant regard for anything in between. Raw and cold with tantalising melody and the occasional guitar breakdown that would not be out of place in mid-80s thrash.
What Dødsfall add to the black metal mix is a knack for mid-paced misanthropic fire and a well-honed skill for expansive hooks sewn into the flesh of every track. It’s all combined with the sort of riffs that wouldn’t go amiss on the earlier work of the band which gives Devo his day job. Tracks like Under Fane av Kosmisk Hat, the title track Kaosmakt and penultimate track Ain all help to stamp Dødsfall’s mark as a black metal band rising above the morass and it’s enough to put a smile on the face of the most miserable nihilist even if, at the same time, you’d be hard pressed to put your finger on anything that is vitally new here. But, as an added bonus, the band breaks its own mould with a final nine-minuter, one of the album highlights and double the length of any previous track the band has produced. It helps to seal the case for sticking Dødsfall’s Kaosmakt on the list of bands to check out as an enjoyable ride into swirling chaos.
(8/10 Reverend Darkstanley)
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