November 15, 2014 • Fallen Empire Records
With that title and band name, this album just screams "generic". And maybe it is, a little bit. Maybe everything feels somewhat generic when you get to as much random black metal on Bandcamp as I do. Regardless, I wanted to put this one in particular out there because I've been having a good time with it.
True, Death Fortress unashamedly apes old-school Darkthrone-slash-Hate-Forest-if-they-were-good-style metal but I'll be damned if they don't do a good job at it. It's black metal at some of its most aggressive without being impenetrable—the drums and guitar all sound hateful and destructive but still retain a nice musical edge to them that keeps the album nicely grounded. The drumming is actually surprisingly interesting; sure there's a lot of typical double-kick grooving and blasting but the fills are plentiful and the way everything is played just really does it for me for some reason.
I'm not going to pretend that Death Fortress does anything new or that there isn't anything in this album you haven't heard before if you're already into black metal whatsoever. But what it does bring to the table is a top-notch way of throwing out some aggression and energy in an incredibly satisfying way—and sometimes that's just what I need, and sometimes all an album needs to give me.
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