Wednesday 25 January 2012

Funeral - Forgotten Abominations

FUNERAL - Forgotten Abominations (MCD -  NUCLEAR WINTER Records)
I do admit that I bought this MCD just for the fact that 1. I liked the band's photo, logo and front cover and 2. because they're Swedish and were supposed to play obscure doom / death metal. I haven't really checked any music of Funeral before putting my order for "Forgotten Abominations" and just went for a hunch that it may be really good band and material. And that's something I don't do that often, to be honest. Also the fact that there are (in the line up) some guys, who used to play in Hypnosia, one of my favourite thrash metal bands, was an important detail. So in this case I decided to take the risk and can honestly say now that I don't regret doing so at all. Funeral is yet another great Swedish band, although their music is completely different from the likes of Morbus Chron, Maim or Demonical (and well, this MCD was recorded in 2004, so years before Maim and Morbus have debuted).
"Forgotten Abominations" consists of three tracks. The opening tune, "Funeral", is sort of an instrumental intro, but I just fuckin love it. The tempo in it is very slow and the riffing reminds me just one band. And it's the mighty fuckin' Asphyx!!!! Hell yeah, Funeral managed to capture here the essence of the style of my favourite Dutch crew and even the melodic guitar lead in "Funeral" can match the style of playing of Eric Daniels and Paul Baayens. Great opening really, maybe it's even sad that there are no vocals in this song, but who cares anyway, it's cool.
Then there are two "normal" songs: "Forgotten Abominations" and "Sacramental Blasphemy" (which is almost nine minutes long!) and I can honestly say that again I've been crushed by very massive and brutal riffs, played in an excellent old school way, with great dose of dark, morbid atmosphere. Funeral mixes doom and death metal, and so there are very slow parts, but also each of those two tracks speeds up at some point, so it's very energetic and aggressive tune. The doomy parts may prevail, but that may be even better, as Funeral sounds really great at this style of playing and with the church bells at two fragments for instance the mood is just really eerie.
OK, enough of that natter. Here's yet another amazing release, one of my favourites actually from the past weeks and really good buying! Mind though that this was recorded already back in 2004 and released as a demo first, so I don't know if Funeral still exists or not, I hope they do and will release something new soon, as they're very promising band. And far better than the US Funeral with Eric Cutler from Autopsy in the line up.  Actually, I like it also over the reunion Autopsy hehe.
Final rate: 90 / 100

No comments:

Post a Comment