Dagor Dagorath
Yetzer Ha'Ra

October 2010
Released: 2010, Twilight Vertrieb
Rating: 2.0/5
Reviewer: Luxi Lahtinen

Keyboard driven Black Metal from Israel, anyone? Dagor Dagorath, this 3-piece vicious Black Metal act, has put out their 3rd full-length record, titled YETZER HA´RA, on Ziekte-NL/More Hate Production in 2009, which has also later been released this year by German Twilight Vertrieb for a worldwide release.



Musically it comes very obvious pretty soon that these 3 Israeli fellows have kept their ears out of the wax when it comes to a similar bombastic and atmospheric sound to an older version of Norwegian metal giants Dimmu Borgir - only with the difference that Dagor Dagorath have left massive orchestration out from their sound, and gone into a full-scale blackish (and partly folk-ish even) warfare as far as the maximum use of the keyboard´s sound is concerned. The keyboards are, practically speaking, everywhere - partly yet unfortunately even dominating their song structures a bit too much, which doesn´t necessarily serve the band´s own purpose to turn more heads to their side for sheer curiosity´s sake.



Another problem is despite the fact that they do sound well rehearsed and determined to break out from their country for a bigger worldwide attention, there are already so many, to put it rudely, ´Dimmu-clones´ around these days that it´s really damn hard to credit the band for anything that could be related to words like ´unique´, or ´groundbreaking´, or ´original´ - or whatever, that might get them out of that small, dark hole - and expose them to everyone on this planet under a more favorable daylight. If they just were one of the first keyboard dominated Black Metal acts among others, then it might be a whole different story there, I guess.



In conclusion, it can only be said that YETZER HA´RA is only a ´safe´ and ´calculated´ sounding effort from Dagor Dagorath - not moving you enough one way or the other, and therefore most likely vanishing into an eternal oblivion after a couple of first spins, if I'm being honest.