A festering return from one of death metal’s most criminally overlooked bands, Funebrarum rise once more to drag the genre back into its most putrid, abyss‑dwelling depths.
FUNEBRARUM
Death metal’s full emergence in the late 80s/early 90s brought danger back to extreme music again after thrash’s peak. Even though it faded through the decade, partially due to black metal but also through nu-metal’s corruptive influences, there were pockets of bands creating guttural rancid infested death metal and Funebrarum from the US were one of them. At the time I expected the band to spearhead a second wave of bludgeoning extremity but that wider recognition didn’t materialise despite creating some of the most horrifying tunes ever leaving them as a cult force after two full lengths spaced eight years apart rather than the global revivalists they really deserved to be.
BECKONING THE VOID OF ETERNAL SILENCE
It has been ten years since Funebrarum’s last output, the EP Exhumation Of The Ancient, with only Daryl Kahan remaining from the band’s inception in 1999. This third album begins with a menacing intro, The Arrival, which slides into the title track with a ominously toned opening as the band opts for atmospheric doom death pacing that lead into abrasive riffs and blasts. True to form the production emphasises a darker choking ethos as Funebrarum has always been about blending atmosphere with outright pulverising as Ša Nagba Amāru continues the grisliness with slow punishing riffage and seismic drum work.
INTO DARK DOMAINS
An isolated riff begins Through The Barren Halls Of Grieving Emptiness as the doom-death pacing switches to a far catchier approach that could be described as groovy. As it progress one of the albums most virulent riffs erupts as the speed increases hugely allowing the guttural vocals to power in. Into Dark Domains sinks into impregnable dread, its slithering speed pushes the song into a dust laden tomb where the atmospherics add amplifying malevolence via the bridging piece Ancestral Manor. Anhela Odor Mortuorum (The Adepts) follows with bone jarring riffage and stark nihilism veering from blasts to gutter trawling creepiness.
FROM ROTTING BURIAL SHROUDS
Even though the album is drenched in crushing desolate sludginess it possesses truly battering phases. From Rotting Burial Shrouds slams on the accelerator, bombarding the listener with a double bass avalanche before the albums closer, the monstrous epic The Whispering Cathedral – Epilogue. At nearly nine minutes the brief acoustic section gives way to an inundation of drum work and choral like background. Each section builds with precision, balancing sublime riff work and thick atmospherics before the inevitable plunge into suffocating deathliness.
Funebrarum’s return proves they remain a cult titan of rancid, abyssal death metal, delivering an album that crushes, festers, and suffocates with the same horrifying power that first marked them back in the early 2000’s.
Funebrarum: Bandcamp