A Decade of Terroreign

A release like this one I have been willing to listen to for a long time. Old school, primitive, brutal and straightforward. Such is the music of the five member band from France, Dark Managarm, which exists since 2005 and it is terrorizing people with its furious and violent music until today. So having released an EP, one split and two full length albums, in order to celebrate the ten years of their existence, they decide to release a compilation with forteen of their best tracks. The album lasts for about an hour and it is a representative sample of the work of Dark Managarm as it contains tracks coming from each of their releases as also two live tracks. The music that the listener will come across into “A Decade of Terroreign”, is warlike Black Metal, devoted to the fast, violent and furious side of the Scandinavian sound.

The compositions that are presented here, show that the band since the beginning until today has a stable attitude towards their music and style that they want to have. The riffs are fast, furious, aggressive, with a warlike style and a lot of Thrash parts. The straightforward and direct approach puts the listener into the tracks from the start, while their very good structure, the interesting changes and the simple but attractive riffs make the album a pleasant listen.

Regarding the performance of the instruments, the band has done a very good job. The guitars play the first role, delivering flawlessly but at the same time with passion and intensity their violent lines. The bass into some tracks is audible while into others is almost inaudible. The drums have quite interesting lines while their performance is responding to the high level demands of the compositions, with stormy outbursts and fast turnings played with technic and power. The vocals are typical, harsh Black Metal vocals, while there are a lot of times that they are combined with heavier Death vocals and they puts out a beautiful result. Concerning the mastering, there has been done a very nice work as every piece has the same sound, something that makes you think that every track comes from the same album. The mixture, in general, is very good and it puts out a very massive result. In some tracks though, mainly the older releases, the bass’ volume is lower so that makes the drums sound flat and the sound is somehow empty. The lyrics are written in English but they are not contained into the cd. It is what someone would expect by listening to this album, namely blasphemous, violent and intensive.

The choice of the tracks for the album is very good, on one hand by offering the best moments of the band are gathered into one album, on the other hand by presenting the entire journey and evolution of the band the ten years of their existence. The release of this collection is a very good opportunity for those who didn’t have the chance to get to know Dark Managarm until now, to do it. However, for their fans maybe it is not so interesting release because it does not contain new or unreleased tracks. Those of you who don’t know them, buy it.