Released By : Solitude Productions
Genre : Doom Metal
Link : http://www.funeralband.no/
Tracklist:
01. Hunger
02. God?
03. Your Pain Is Mine
04. The Rest…
05. Dancing In A Liquid Veil
06. How Death May Linger
07. Father
08. Blood From The Soil
09. Wrapped All In Woe
FUNERAL, for the most part one of the more instantly recognisable names in the Doom Metal genre, and though their style has changed over the years they have never been short of a very loyal supporter base and each of their releases is still met with quite a lot of interest and intrigue. This new release, courtesy of one of the world’s premiere doom metal labels Solitude Productions is basically a slight re-working of a previously lost demo that was initially recorded way back in 1996 and was meant to be released in between TRAGEDIES and IN FIELDS OF PESTILENT GRIEF. TO cut a long story short, the band at that stage didn’t get picked up by a label and they also have a major personnel change due to the recruitment of a new vocalist, so among all this the album was basically shelved right up until some time in 2010 when the decision was made to redo the tracks and give them some sort of proper release.
It’s always interesting to hear something from a band that has been lost in time and the composition of these tracks really helps to show what was happening in the band at the time. Yeah, it’s still the slow, droning cult doom that they have always released, but there was definitely something cool going on at this stage. The transition from the slightly more extreme vocals of the early days to the cleaner, more gothic style that the band uses today was happening right around this time and it’s a shame that vocals were never cut on the demo because it would have been interesting to hear some of these tunes with some more extreme screams in places. There’s also probably a bit more a keyboard element here that wasn’t quite as prevalent in their really early material so that’s pretty interesting too.
Fans of FUNERAL should definitely enjoy being able to witness a moment from the band that was all but lost up until this point, but TO MOURN IS A VIRTUE also works well without the whole history to it and should be easily enjoyed by any doom fans that don’t mind plenty of clean, gothic style vocals.
Written By ZeeZee
Rating : 8/10
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