Funeral Mist – Hekatomb Review

Few would argue that death metal has enjoyed an impressively strong run recently; best-of lists from recent years have been dominated by it, and death metal has already left a conspicuous mark on 2018, with a number of notable heavy-weight releases still to come.

But it’s not like black metal has been stagnant while its (for the most part) heavier, deathlier cousin has been monopolizing the glossy pages. Few would further argue the fact that no other off-shoot has seen more experimentation and dilution in recent years than black metal, particularly right here in the U.S. and A.

If you’re an obstinate member of black metal’s old guard, however—a person who spent formative years amidst the 2nd wave when bands like Darkthrone, Mayhem, Gorgoroth and Emperor governed the land—you have perhaps / probably / frequently had to work extra hard to uncover your next fix that reaches back and effectively mirrors the style of the early 90s without allowing the off-shoot’s fondness for the unconventional to eclipse its straightforwardness and starkness. Not really the case for the death metal aficionados cruising the halls.

Black metal in 2018 has become an exceedingly messy trail to straggle. It’s taken the genre’s historic tenets—an almost perverse craving to be singular, dangerous (sometimes to the point of being “fugitive”), arrogant, raw and reclusive—and it’s aggravated such details to a point where we now have a surplus of bands that value style and/or risk over actual substance. The gamble has worked, apparently, because the current scene is factually extreme in that it subsists with two conflicting boundaries that exhaust Newton’s third law like it’s their goddamn job. The result: one side that’s fueled the peril to a point where people are forced to wonder about getting publicly shamed or even bear-sprayed for opting to check something out, and an equal and opposite reaction that’s delivered intimate knowledge of what it sounds like when a band mixes the Stone Roses with Weakling. Bad black metal! Bad! And somewhere in between lies all the necessary arcane secrets, keys to infernal space portals, and every outfit or disguise a person could ever hope to have land in their lap. What a world.

But maybe you’re the sort of person who simply misses the days when black metal bands just…got evil all the time. Down to the marrow evil that’s furiously fast and possessed with the same raw spirit that bedeviled so many of yon elder gods. No finger on the pulse of current issues that rankle to the point of explosion—just…get evil all the time. For you, there is a Funeral Mist.

The long-awaited third full-length from Daniel Rostén’s unhallowed project hit the streets two weeks ago, and early reactions seem to indicate that people are either in love and regard it as a potential black metal album of the year, or they feel it falls a bit too close to the modern works of Rostén’s other mainstay, the recently maligned Marduk. They’re not really very much alike, though, beyond similarities in production (same engineer: Marduk’s Devo Andersson) and the fact that Hekatomb spends a great deal of its time flailing at 100mph. Comparatively speaking, this has zero to do with WWII fetishizing, and it’s several shades more compelling and unhinged, particularly the manner in which the demonic vocals are delivered. Those raving howls are the highlight of the record, and the way Rostén (also responsible for the guitars and bass) bends that ghastly voice around the avalanche of riffs and all the various samples of pastors bawling and the overall “churchiness” that Funeral Mist is known for is gruesome and exquisite.

In terms of style, Hekatomb feels closer to the more straight-forward lewdness of 2003’s Salvation, but Rostén proves himself more than just a little willing to piss off purists, as the record also drops a few head-scratching moments that preserve the sort of oddball approach that 2009’s Maranatha willingly forked over. Opener “In Nomine Domini” spends its initial seconds opening some sort of gateway to Hell before loosening a notably un-evil, damn-near funky bit that could just as easily take a turn on Jump-Da-Fuck-Up Dr. instead of chasing through Hellfire Ln., but the latter thankfully gets pegged. The brew is further muddled with the ensuing “Naught but Death,” a song that somehow manages to make a launching Hellhammer riff sound like something modern Agnostic Front might produce, but unlike its predecessor, the song never really recovers.

But holy HELL do things ever get hot from that point forward. Outside of the sluggish dip that is the late-hitting “Metamorphosis,” the rest of the record blisters like the sun falling directly into your underpants. “Shedding Skin,” “Cockatrice,” “Within the Without,” “Hosanna” and the closing “Pallor Mortis” all renew the sort of 2nd wave attitude that built “atmospheric black metal” through interminable icy riffs riding alongside drums that flail like an octopus hitting an incredibly charged electric fence.

Short-and-sweet, the furious heart of Hekatomb drops whatever post-gazecore bullshit your Arcade Fire-loving cubicle chum at work calls “black metal” into a goddamn Satanic tornado, and I’m not even all that sure what the hell a Satanic tornado even is. It’s probably big, though, and it’s all-consuming, so you might as well enjoy your death as “Cockatrice”—a song that surely stands as a contender for best black metal song of 2018—whips your body into a frenzy and tosses it directly into Hell’s burning rivers.

Funeral Mist works best when the noise created emulates the scenes in the original Evil Dead film where the recently awakened forest wraiths rush the cabin door, or those moments when the bodies of those poor victims become possessed and the flesh immediately spoils. Black metal chained in the fruit cellar of a doomed and isolated cabin, ye cursed hags! The kind of roar that absolutely crackles with evil and causes the room temperature to drop 20 degrees as soon as you hit play. That, my friends, is Hekatomb in a gloriously poisonous nutshell.

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