I waited this album impatiently since I loved Dark Funeral's first full length album, 'The Secrets of the Black Arts'. This one is as good as the precedent album, but the songs are more diversified and more brutal, especially when it come to the drumming. On this opus Lord Ahriman is the only founding member still in the band, but the music is almost the same, but a bit more melodic and aggressive. Still, the lyrics are about satanism, now written by Emperor Magnus Caligula, but I prefer those on 'The Secrets...'.

The vocals are done by Emperor Magnus Caligula and again I prefer the vocals of Themgoroth on 'The Secrets...', but Emperor's vox are not so bad after all, but they can become boring in the long run. The production is not bad, now we can hear all the melodies, but there is no use of stereo and its a shame (Tagtren has produced the album again...), it would be much better with the stereo...

Another bad thing is the ugly layout. The cover art is horrible (the one of 'The Secrets...' was so great, I can't understand why they decided to work with someone else than Necrolord this time) and inside the booklet we can see the band member's faces with their corpse paint, but the photos are in color, so they look somewhat like a bunch of morons. Well, I don't really care about that, it is only the booklet, and the digipak is really beautiful, with landscape pictures and a wolf howling to death (personally, I don't really understand why these pictures are on this digipak, Dark Funeral is supposed to be a satanic band... I don't see what a fucking Swedish forest has to do with satanism...)

If you liked the precedent album you should like Vobiscum Satanas, but it is a bit less dark (due to the monotonous vocals), but still it is a strong album.

© 1999 cythrawl