Artist: Dark Fog Eruption
Country: Japan
Label: Self-Released
Formats: Demo Tape
Year: 2025
Dark Fog Eruption started sometime in the late 2010s and has been around for a while now, yet I haven’t really paid much attention to them. And that’s despite the fact that I’ve already reviewed Ryotaro’s other bands, such as Eternal Ice, Remina and Autumn Mountain, on these pages. Time to rectify that. So, with a fair number of releases under the name Dark Fog Eruption, I had some homework to do before I could write anything meaningful about this latest work, a self-released demo tape with two tracks called ‘Decline’.
In my reviews about a couple of Ryotaro’s latest releases I have commented that regardless of the name he’s operating under, the music is fairly recognizable. That means that he’s doing something right, especially if you take in consideration that the majority of his work ventures into rather traditional Black Metal waters. The other side of the coin, however, is that you might also wonder what the added value is of maintaining multiple projects that are not very different from each other musically.
Although that is a good thought exercise in itself, I will mainly focus on ‘Decline’ here. But, it is inevitable to compare this latest demo to not only previous Dark Fog Eruption releases, but also the ones from Ryotaro’s other projects. A conclusion, of sorts, is that this is a logical continuation of this specific project’s previous output. And if you, like me, mostly have been familiar with Eternal Ice, this is not miles away from that project, its just that the sound is a bit darker and murkier. Either way, it is focussed on riffs with quite prominent vocals and a rather brisk pace. Very traditional in character with a strong focus on the basic values of the late 90s and early 00s Black Metal.
In recent years, this project has been rather inconspicuous, with Ryotaro appearing to focus more on Eternal Ice, which raises the question of whether these two projects have more or less merged. On a musical side of things, though, ‘Decline’ is another proof of this Japanese musician’s capabilities.
