LIVE ALBUM REVIEW
DARK FUNERAL - A Beast To Praise
Controlled, heavy, clean, yet less ferocious.
DARK FUNERAL’s fourth live album, "A Beast To Praise", puts the perfectionist approach of transferring the flawlessness of studio recordings to the stage into the background, instead reconstructing and bringing to the fans the performance discipline the band has sharpened over the years within a live context. What defines DARK FUNERAL’s live identity is not merely the speed of the blast beats or the sharpness of the melodic tremolo guitars, but the constant forward momentum created by the interaction between these two elements onstage. Recorded at Fållan in Stockholm on April 16, 2022, and running for roughly 70 minutes, "A Beast To Praise" largely preserves this mechanism; the difference between it and the band’s first live album, "De Profundis Clamavi Ad Te Domine", released 22 years earlier, is that experience now determines the performance more than lack of control. DARK FUNERAL sounds more precise, heavier, and more clearly separated here; in return, some of the more unrestrained aggression of the earlier live recording has been left behind.
The recording makes the concert atmosphere an immediate part of the music, opening with the rising murmur of the crowd, drum hits, and dark ambience. As 'Unchain My Soul' kicks in, the melodic guitar lines and Jalomaah’s drumming come to the fore, while Heljarmadr’s vocals do more than simply reproduce the studio versions of the songs; particularly through his direct interaction with the audience, he places the performance firmly within its live context. The crowd joining in during the song’s bridge is one of the clearest examples of this. This is where the composition’s potential in a live setting truly comes to the surface: the audience is not merely an element heard in the background of the recording, but becomes a second vocal layer that expands the song’s dramatic structure.
The real strength of DARK FUNERAL’s live performance, however, lies in the uninterrupted momentum created by the rhythm section and guitars working together. Jalomaah’s blast beats remain clearly defined even at high speeds, while Lord Ahriman and Chaq Mol’s melodic guitar lines retain their individual character rather than blurring together beneath the heavy distortion. This is also where one of the most significant production choices on "A Beast To Praise" becomes apparent. The instruments do not pile on top of one another; guitars, drums, and vocals are presented with clear separation. This is a major advantage on high-tempo tracks such as 'The Arrival Of Satan’s Empire'. Because the melodic contours of the riffs do not disappear beneath the blast beats, DARK FUNERAL’s melodic Black Metal side remains visible within the aggression.
That clarity, however, also constitutes the album’s most debatable point. Although DARK FUNERAL’s stage performance is extremely controlled from a technical standpoint, that control smooths out some of the rawer and more unpredictable character of the earlier live recording. The freer, more aggressive live feel of the "De Profundis Clamavi Ad Te Domine" era has been replaced here by a more professional, heavier, and more precise execution. Consequently, evaluating "A Beast To Praise" simply as a "better-recorded" live album would be incomplete. While the production brings the musical details into focus, it also reduces some of the sense of physical risk onstage. The routine the band has developed over the years is not a weakness in the performance; on the contrary, it is the fundamental element defining the character of this recording.
Heljarmadr’s vocals are another important part of this shift. Unlike the wilder vocal character of the Emperor Magus Caligula era, Heljarmadr presents himself as a more communicative frontman, increasing interaction between the songs and turning the audience into an active part of the performance. This approach produces particularly interesting results when applied to long-established songs such as 'Vobiscum Satanas'. The older compositions do not remain mere nostalgic replays; through a different vocal interpretation, they are repositioned within the stage identity of the current DARK FUNERAL lineup. At the same time, this reinterpretation does not always capture the aggression of the earlier recordings. Particularly with material from the classic era, a distance emerges—whether consciously or unconsciously—between technical proficiency and the character of the performances as they existed historically.
The setlist is also critical to understanding what this album is. The emphasis on the "Where Shadows Forever Reign" and "We Are The Apocalypse" eras prevents the concert from becoming merely a celebration of past achievements and instead turns it into a document representing the stage identity of the current lineup. Classics such as 'The Arrival Of Satan’s Empire', 'Vobiscum Satanas', and 'The Secrets Of The Black Arts' retain the band’s historical weight, while newer songs such as 'When I’m Gone', 'Leviathan', and 'We Are The Apocalypse' demonstrate that the repertoire is not built solely around nostalgia. On the other hand, choices such as completely omitting the "Attera Totus Sanctus" era also reveal the inevitable limitations of compressing a career spanning more than three decades into roughly 70 minutes. This is therefore not a complete career retrospective, but a representation of DARK FUNERAL’s current stage identity supported by selected milestones from its past.
The most successful aspect of this approach is the ability of old and new material to function according to the same performance logic. The high-tempo structure of an early track such as 'Open The Gates' still creates an immediate physical impact under the technical control of the current lineup, while 'When I’m Gone', with its more melodic and cleaner opening, broadens the set’s dynamic range. Likewise, tracks such as 'Goddess Of Sodomy' and 'Nail Them To The Cross' bring aggressive riffs and audience response together on the same rhythmic plane. As a result, the concert is not simply a sequence of fast Black Metal songs; it creates small but functional contrasts in tempo, melodic density, and stage communication.
The audience is an important complement to this structure. Applause, chants, voices joining in with the songs, and responses to Heljarmadr’s calls make the physical space of the recording particularly tangible during transitions between tracks. Yet the album’s success does not come from the sheer volume of the crowd, but from its proper placement within the mix. Because the audience is never pushed ahead of the guitars and drums, it does not disrupt the music’s core structure; instead, it raises the dramatic impact of the performance when necessary. Fållan’s atmosphere therefore functions not merely as background noise, but as an acoustic element carrying the real-time character of the concert.
In this context, the fact that "A Beast To Praise" was recorded in 2022, at one of DARK FUNERAL’s first major concerts following the forced stage hiatus caused by the pandemic, also takes on significance. The recording does not allow this historical context to overshadow the music, but the intense audience participation and the band’s communication onstage make the sense of collective performance being rebuilt after a long interruption audible. The album’s documentary value therefore does not stem merely from the fact that "DARK FUNERAL is playing live." It also shows how the current lineup relates to the band’s earlier repertoire onstage while bringing the "We Are The Apocalypse" era to a close.
Although the visual side appears to have had the potential to function as a separately valuable live document, the question of whether the audio format is sufficient on its own is not entirely irrelevant here. DARK FUNERAL’s stage identity is closely tied to the visual and theatrical side of Black Metal, so documenting this concert solely through audio leaves a sense that a complementary dimension has been missed. Nevertheless, in terms of the existing recording, this omission does not undermine its function as a musical document. The album conveys the sonic world of the concert with sufficient clarity within its own limitations.
The use of tracks such as 'The Secrets Of The Black Arts' and 'Where Shadows Forever Reign' toward the finale also strengthens the album’s dramatic structure. In particular, the dark melodic character of the latter provides enough atmospheric weight to bring the concert to a close after its consistently high-tempo nature. The relationship established between the dark atmosphere at the beginning and the closing moments at the end demonstrates that the setlist is not simply a collection of randomly selected songs from the discography. Here, the concert has been constructed as a performance with its own beginning and ending.
"A Beast To Praise" is therefore not a recording that redefines DARK FUNERAL’s live identity; rather, it is a document showing how firmly established that identity has become. The band makes no attempt to reproduce the raw aggression of the 1990s exactly, and this is precisely where the album’s true character emerges: a more controlled, heavier, cleaner, and more professionally seasoned DARK FUNERAL onstage. This approach may leave those looking for the dangerous and unrestrained feel of the earlier era somewhat at a distance, but it clearly demonstrates the current lineup’s technical proficiency and its ability to bring different periods of the repertoire together within a single stage language.
Ultimately, "A Beast To Praise" escapes being a simple concert copy of the studio recordings because Heljarmadr’s stage communication, Jalomaah’s rhythmic command, the melodic guitar interplay of Lord Ahriman and Chaq Mol, and the Fållan audience’s constant involvement create a distinct performance character within the recording. At the same time, the overly controlled production occasionally reduces the risk and rawness inherent to live music. The album’s value lies precisely in this duality: while showing why DARK FUNERAL remains an effective live Black Metal band today, it does not simply carry the band’s past ferocity into the present unchanged; instead, it reshapes that ferocity through the technical discipline acquired over the years. In this respect, "A Beast To Praise" is less an essential live album than a strong career snapshot documenting the close of the "We Are The Apocalypse" era and clearly capturing what the current DARK FUNERAL sounds like onstage.
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