Dagorlad – The End of the Dark Ages

This is Dagorlad’s second album, the first one with AOD on vocals. I bought this album from a small metaldistro. The name Dagorlad was already familiar, as I had recently purchased the entertaining ‘Herald of Doom’ album. This, plus the fact that the cover of the album was so intriguing. Belgian masterdesigner Kris Verwimp made a dark composition with a cloaked and hooded figure in an image of grey and brown, in the shade of dried blood. And later, it turned out the cover was just fit for the music.

The entire album is very atmospheric. To me, a thick atmosphere is Dagorlad’s trademark. The atmosphere of ‘Incantations’, Dagorlad’s debut album, is rather creepy (especially the first four songs on the album), on ‘Herald it is lighter and more medieval. On ‘The End of the Dark Ages’, is very dark. The album tells the story of Zul Dahr and Malek, an evil king and a humble man of the forest. Malek must kill Zul Dahr, and Zul Dahr wants to kill Malek to prevent this. Zul Dahr uses dark magic and weapons hunting Malek, and the sound used on this album would make a perfect soundtrack if the story would ever be filmed. It doesn’t happen much that music/atmosphere and story blend so well, but Dagorlad succeeds in doing it.

What does ‘The End of the Dark Ages’ have to offer? Dagorlad uses lots of keyboards, in fact, keyboards have a great importance in their work. Frequently, they sound medieval. The intro, which is called ‘Intro’, begins with nearly two minutes of keyboards. This creates a landscape, with forests, castles made out of big grey stones and rising to the heavens… Then the sound begins to get more bombastic, darker and guitars join in. Dark clouds gather above the land, and the land seems to be threatened or terrorized. ‘The End of the Dark Ages’ succeeds in pulling you into it’s dark world. A very nice example of this is ‘Zul Dahr’. An organ is playing some sinister melody, wolves howl, and then the guitars come in with the drums playing a rather fast paced riff. AOD begins singing, with a voice that would be fit for a sorcerer in an abandoned tower. A mixture of whisper and rasping, and sometimes it sounds a bit nasal. But that last fact didn’t bother me a lot. And it sounds as if AOD enjoys the evil he sings about. At some points he uses a clean voice. Those parts are accompanied of keyboards and a down paced, softly screaming guitar.

The guitars in combination with the drums are much faster on this album, compared to Dagorlad’s other work. This results in ‘The End of the Dark Ages’ being a better album for headbangers. ‘Herald of Doom’ is an album you must listen to, while ‘The End of the Dark Ages’ is an album that contains some parts you can bang your head to. An example of this is a part of ‘Zul Dahr’. After the intro, when we first hear AOD sing, there is some drumming with the feet, a fast paced riff and a very nice part of the lyrics. The vocals nearly guide the banger along the way, one might say.

The other songs on this album are made up of the same ingredients: lots of keyboards, fast paced guitars, vocals that do not always follow the melody (though they blend well). The songs consist out of several parts: intro, faster part, spoken interlude, atmospheric keyboards, … The entire album is very consistent because of this, and entertaining enough. ‘The End of the Dark Ages’ is a nice album for people who like their music dark and a little cheesy. Those who need long melodies or those who are allergic to keyboards: beware!

Favourite song: ‘Zul Dahr’

I never got deeply into Bal-Sagoth, so it makes sense that a Bal-Sagoth clone would capture my attention even less than the original. 'The End Of The Dark Ages' is the sound of a band desperately striving to be epic but having no idea of how to do that aside from through the empty mimicry of other epic bands. It's vacuous music to the point where I seriously can't remember anything about it even after a dozen listens. It's that boring. Dagorlad doesn't even really sound like Bal-Sagoth, they just sound like a weird attempt at sounding exactly like that band. It's like when you were a little kid and your cheapass parents bought you bootleg toys from Mexico, so you had to get dressed up in your Spaderman pajamas with a black scorpion in the center. The experience of listening to this album is equally unsatisfying.

This shit's really stale. Plodding mid-paced blackish/symphonic metal with dramatic narration in what seems like every second of the album. The production is very flat and lifeless to the point where it doesn't even seem like music half the time, just instruments shuffling around in a sort of melodic fashion. There's no aggression or intensity, but it doesn't feel restrained, it just feels... tired, like the band recorded the whole thing after two and a half days with no sleep. They're phoning everything in. There's a lot of keys and synthestra that attempt to sound epic but really just sound like the soundtrack to a pulp fantasy novel, and not in a good way, just a generic way. Riffs are three-chord tremolo or chug affairs that meander under the keyboards like aardvarks just sort of trundling around without incident.

I don't get the point of this, it sounds like the band just wants to say "FUCK IT, I'M DONE WITH THIS" all throughout the record but plod on without any enthusiasm. It's not like the songwriting is even good; I think like 70% of the album is totally devoid of drums (or drum machine, rather, which makes no attempt to sound lifelike), just guitar/keyboards/bad narration. It's an attempt at narrative songwriting that just cocks itself up over and over again. Who's the audience here? People who want a mediocre version of Bal-Sagoth to ween their grandmas off of Perry Como? Really, who wants to listen to this? It's not HORRIBLE, but it's entirely uninteresting.

The sound of Dagorlad is best described as a mishmash of symphonic black metal, with melodic death metal guitar and lots of spoken word passages. There are also some fairly obvious power metal influences in the sound. While Dagorlad does some interesting atmospheric keyboard work, and a lot of the riffs they play are pretty cool, the way they try to combine these elements doesn’t always work particularly well for them. The keyboard is always piping up at the wrong time with the wrong sound and making the dynamic awkward. The spoken word stuff they use is also quite overdramatic. The result of this is often some really silly sounding metal: picture "Stonehenge" from Spinal Tap, only more dramatic and closer to death metal than heavy metal. The thing that really pushes them over the top is the lyrical content though. Their songs seem to be mostly about Dungeons and Dragons or something that comes close enough to fool someone who isn’t into it. I tried to take this album seriously at first, but by the third track I had doubled over and was laughing hysterically. The whole thing sounded like an overly dramatized ballad about the Dungeon Master. While there is some pretty obvious talent in this band, and some of the songs are cool, most of it is too silly to take seriously. I will probably keep this album around, but only for comic value.

It took Dagorlad no less than six years to release their new album, something which I don’t mind if the result has sufficient quality. The Belgian two piece band cannot be blamed for doing things wrong. “Herald of doom” features lots of keyboards and sounds wonderfully epic, constantly dark and menacing at the same time though.

The lyrics are part of this too, as this is a conceptual album about the aggressive warrior tribe of the Imptacar and the Brotherhood of the Silver Cross. The story seems a bit weak but it’s nice to listen to the epic, mostly slow motion music of Dagorlad while reading the booklet.

The band could be described as a satisfying mix of Summoning and Bal-Sagoth, their style resembling the latter most. They possess Summoning’s evil element and the patient, slow development of their musical visions, at the same time they possess Bal-Sagoth’s epic grandeur and the key to the musical part of tough and brutal sword & sorcery fantasy.

Dagorlad may not reach the level of the mentioned bands entirely but this album has very good quality, despite the rather boring and uninspired drum machine. As we won't be treated to another Lord Of The Rings movie Dagorlad might be an alternative for a ticket to a better world. I bought mine and can only recommend it.

Some bands never get the chance to reach a greater public. They appear in a few catalogues, but because their isn’t any info on their releases, you simply let their names pass by and forget them when reading the next name in the catalogue. And it’s a big catalogue you’re reading. But sometimes, you get lucky. I was reading an internet catalogue and each release had a little information next to it. For “Herald of Doom” the information said: “for fans of Bal-Sagoth”. Of course, this got my attention. Bal-Sagoth are one of a kind, unique and magnificent. They are gods to me. I had to get this album! Surely, I had doubts about the band, for how could one possibly copy the sound of mighty Bal-Sagoth? The answer is rather simply: you can’t copy Bal-Sagoth. But that doesn’t mean Dagorlad is a fraud, far from that…

Why did the catalogue mention that Dagorlad is for the fans of Bal-Sagoth, while Bal-Sagoth is unique? By taking a look at the elements used: a dark fantasy story, a lot of keyboards and the harsh vocals that don’t match the music. Sounds like Bal-Sagoth indeed. But the differences are very clear when listening to the record. First of all, the guitars are nearly always played at a slower pace, creating a melody from variation in the guitars rather than by playing fast. Also, in the middle of a guitar piece the sounds goes a lot higher, and then continues. This gives the music an experimental tint. Note that the guitars can go at a faster pace, but when that happens the vocals go at their own pace or the keyboards will dominate.

Second important thing about Dagorlad are the very dominant keyboards. As mentioned above, they have more importance than the guitars. This gives Dagorlad the opportunity to create a medieval atmosphere with a lot of dark parts. In “Dwarves” for example we take a journey into unknown dark caves and get to the deeper parts of the mountains. This is simulated by eerie keyboard sounds which are accompanied by deeper tones after a while, and at last guitars, vocals and drums join in. We have arrived at the halls of the dwarves, where they forge mighty weapons and armour. And it happens all right in front of your closed eyes.

Next important feature are the vocals. They are some kind of mixture between whispers and grunts. This makes that the lyrics can be understood, although the vocals have a rough edge. They vocals are not melodic, they don’t really follow the music but rather go their own way. Sometimes the lyrics are full sentences, making it very difficult to sing them to the music. But as I already said, the storytelling part of Dagorlad is the important part in the music.

The drums are nearly always on the background. There is a constant sound of cymbals, the overall drumming is quite simple but since the importance lies with the keyboards this is not really a bad thing. More powerful and more creative drumming might add a new dimension to the music though.

My overall conclusion: while Bal-Sagoth can be listened to for the music only, the same thing can’t be done with Dagorlad. There is too much importance given to the vocals and the story. The music itself is sometimes rather cacophonic and without consistent melody. The music needs several listening sessions to be digested. More attention to the drums and the vocals could make Dagorlad a band with more depth. Dagorlad has potential and doesn’t use not all of it. People with patience should give “Herald of Doom” a chance.