It is true, you know. The RMR zine covered a ton of moody doom pieces in 2026. But real vile Black Metal and ferocious Extreme Metal disasters? None too many. Not that there weren’t any, of course. In This Hell graced our turntables lately, and it wasn’t necessarily bad fare. Thus, it’s time to reach yet again into the underground and grope around in the abject darkness down there. Ze Grand Masters of ze Okkvlt have been strangely silent these days. Or perhaps they missed our very own freight train, who knows?
So, luckily the Spaniards of Dantalion appeared on our mighty radar. Or more precisely, the Galicians. This seems to be a sport, by the way. There appears to be some identity crises in Spain. Galicians, Basques, Catalans, RMR covered them. But proud Spaniards? Not so sure. Yet, we’re not here to address thorny nationalist and political agendas. In this sense, let Dantalion‘s self-titled piece roar away. All devoid of intricate local shenanigans.
And roar it does. As of the very first second, the unknown Diego‘s mighty vox will relentlessly assault your eardrums with a wild mix of rasps, snarls, and ferociously shouted vocals. A performance that won’t leave you until the last note peters out some 40 minutes later. As far as the RMR Secret Service could discern, the man had the mic until the virus-infested Year of the Dark Lord 2020 and is now back in service to perform with Dantalion yet again.
The record boasts predominantly Black Metal with some Doom Black and a few hints of Death Metal thrown in for good measure. And as pig-headed as this sounds, there’s a lot of old-school blackened fare in this concoction. Thunderous yet typical drum work, acrid and often tremolo-laden guitar work round out the picture. And yet, Dantalion here managed to inject enough melody to keep the Extreme Metal adepts’ juices up and interested. All good, right? If only.
So, let’s start to address the elephant in the room. For the first 20 minutes or so, the record sounds fine. Not mighty fine, but okay fine. But after that time, the ugly head of the repetition bug shows its scarred visage a few times too many. And it ain’t some copycat measure of sorts, but more a similarity fest that started to grate on our bones after a while. In other words, there is only so much shouting on a mid-tempo melody that you can take. And after a while, this metalhead’s brain started to tune out and think about other matters. This is a truly bad seismic fault in a record.
And again, you’ll find a lot of raw ‘n’ gritty metal right in front of you. A feast for adepts of the extremes. But somehow, the songsmithery got stuck somewhere in a loop and won’t develop things further. One could argue that Black Metal is repetitive and reasonably lo-fi, thus hindering progression. And all of this is true, of course. Yet, apart from the ever-present barks, Dantalion didn’t produce any great hooks. Just a bunch of Extreme Metal flowing evenly down some metal river. Majestically, straight in the middle of that mighty stream, and without any significant twists and turns. Meaning, whilst finding a reasonably well-spiced record, the RMR crew kept looking for that brutality, for some daemonic action that should scare the bejeesus out of our frazzled metal souls. But nothing ever appeared out of that abyss. If ever there was one, that is.
So, ultimately, Dantalion produced a record bestowed with medium heat. ‘Extreme metal’ for the masses, if you will. Delivered with limited ferocity, so as not to scare any music-leaning busybody away. A record that might incite some n00b to spend a buck or two and own THAT single, harsh metal record in a sprawling collection of miscellaneous pop items. But to us trve metalheads, there is work to do for this band to tighten the songwriting and action the juice pump to get to higher, more astute levels of ferociousness.
Record Rating: 5/10 | Label: Base Record Production | Web: Official Band Site
Release Date: 1 November 2026