Originally written by Erik Thomas
Are bands really still playing this style of death metal? Are fans still listening to it? With 2 members of Incantation (Kyle Severn and John McEntree), and the wife of one of the 2 members of Incantation, (Jill McEntree), with the rest of the band rounded out by some pretty obscure long running underground dudes who like Incantation and Entombed, you have a good idea of Funerus’ sound. Generally mid paced doomy, raw death metal with nary a creative spark in sight, fueled by man’s ruin of the earth and its environment, Funerus’s message is carried through 9 short, forgetful lumbering tunes, that could be compared to Bolt Thrower in pace an delivery, but without the pulse quickening song writing. Runemagick comes over as a possible comparison due to the mostly lethargic pacing with the odd loping speed up thrown in.
Apparently aiming for the Sunlight low-end sound, Funerus cite Grave and Entombed as influences, but I don’t hear it much. The guitar tone is muddy rather than a mid range buzz, and the song writing just doesn’t measure up, despite their commendable lyrical leanings. Compound the middle of the road songwriting with mostly short songs and the two elements simply don’t add up to an album worth your time or money considering the alternatives. The slow, earthy (in both senses of the word) delivery of the riffs cries out for long dirges laced with mammoth moments of oppressive weight as epic as the earth’s various landscapes and relative destruction, rather than short tenuous bursts of atonal riffage.
Even when turning up the urgency one painfully executed notch, such as in “Suffering Life”, or “Web of Deceit”, while definitely more Bolt Thrower sounding, just doesn’t convey any kind of real dynamic sense of song writing. It’s just sped up a tad from the usual droning mediocrity. The only time I was even vaguely interested in any of Funerus’ riffs was the 0:55 and 2:25 marks of “Nebulous Existence” that has some Grave-like groove, but its short lived and buried between rudimentary, sloth paced banality. The band has the potential to be pretty heavy, but the muddy/throwback production sounds like a demo, instead of the Sunlight/Incantation hybrid sound I think they were aiming for.
The fact of the matter is the throwback sound, while having some nostalgia value has to be done perfectly to be any good (see Chaosbreed, Bloodbath), Funerus just seem to be trying to create hybrid throwback that combines JL America style death metal with a splash of Swedish death metal and playing it really slowly, and quite simply the end result is more than forgetful. Plus, I think US bands seem to do better at mimicking their own death metal heritage (Floridian death metal, NYDM) rather than being successful at trying to copy the European sound. Invasion is the only US band I have heard that culls the Sunlight sound well. A needless release that won’t impress many, from a band that the scene really doesn’t need.
