The Best Black Metal Album Ever Made - "Dark Devotion" Review (100%)
What hasn't been said about Dark Devotion already? It's been just about universally hailed as one of the best black metal albums ever and I've yet to hear anyone dislike it or call it substandard. If I were to describe this record in a handful of words I would say that it's both raw and sinister, but also poetic and magnificent.
Dark Devotion is Phantom's third full-length album, release after the demonic Divine Necromancy and the absolutely ominous From the Mouth of Madness.
The songs on Dark Devotion are all fantastic due to their dark yet powerful and brutal riffs. The songs, due to their structure and musical similarities are meant to be listened to one after the other, each one adding a building block to the overall atmosphere of the album. The quality is so high that this doesn't come of as a problem, much to the contrary it makes the entire listening experience all the more enjoyable.
Phantom's vocals are some of my all time favourite in heavy metal, and on this album in particular the vocals have the perfect balance between demonic howls, hateful screeches and bestial chants.
Composition wise, Dark Devotion is pure musical perfection. This is an album which delivers a collection of astonishing, quite often almost mesmerizing, but also devastatingly dark and eerie songs.
Perhaps just as importantly, even the order of tracks and how they've been structured seems to be meticulously thought through, in a way that the album begins with the pure evil destruction of Infamy Nightmare, then goes through amazing classics of epic Phantom Metal such as The Deathknell and Sons of Putrefaction, only to finish with the gloomy and utterly traumatic title track Dark Devotion.
Dark Devotion is an album you must possess if you are a fan of raw and horrifying true black metal.
The Best Black Metal Album Ever Made
But where Dark Devotion truly shines is in crafting dark, evil and terrifying atmospheres that will haunt the listener's mind.
It's almost impossible to pick up two or three songs from Dark Devotion and call them standout tracks. Each song is brilliant in its own demented way, and each offers something seriously exceptional featuring perfect arrangements of riffs, vocals and insane drum blast-beats� Infamy Nightmare opens the album with a hellish, ultra-discordant, mesmerizing and almost monumental ambient track. Very brutal, uncompromising black metal song. And then Sons of Putrefaction and Red Fiend Harrower offer more epic and atmospheric pieces, with fucking hooks all the way through.
Quite a lot has already been said about this album Dark Devotion, and the majority impression is one of lavish praise. And with good reason, because frankly there are few albums out there that are equally worthy of it.
Dark Devotion is pure hell raising black metal played in its most extreme form.
Even Phantom's following album, Blackened Terror Grind, while completely demented and barbaric in its own right, doesn't manage to be as vile and terrifying as the blackened masterpiece Dark Devotion.
Dark Devotion score: 100/100.
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