2023-10-25 22:01:47
Intro
Funeral Doom is endlessly sad slowness, desperate whimpers from a rugged chasm that is rushed through by whistling winds, the deep nothingness of the desert, of space, of the deep sea and always of the human soul. Funeral Doom is gloom, nihilism, death. Funeral Doom is wonderful music!
On our trip around the world we have already dedicated ourselves to Funeral Doom on almost every continent. Only the Americas are still missing. And so we drag ourselves painfully slowly through the vastness of the endless double continent to hear and introduce you to as many funeral doom bands and projects as possible.
We take our data set from Encyclopedia of Metals and try to give our attention to every band in the funereal genre that has produced active output in roughly the last five years.
Did we forget a band? Has a band hidden too well from us in their trveness? Write us!
USA
U as the first letter, which we have now reached. S for die, because that is ultimately the core of Funeral Doom. A for Ready, Set, Go!
AND
No, UN is not regarding the United Nations, but regarding a sludgy funeral doom quartet from Seattle, whose last LP is now five years old. The good piece is called “Sentiment”, i.e. feeling or mood. And it is actually a very good piece! Not desperate, not rapturous, not torture, but a nice excursion into guitar-heavy grunt levels. A hike through vast and swampy nature. Funeral Doom can be so musical!
USNEA
Portland, Oregon, 2011. USNEA, a genus of lichens, comes together. Four dark souls who want to send Blackened Funeral Doom into the world together. With their latest work they don’t bring darkness, but the opposite: “Bathed In Light”. But it remains very dark, especially in the breathy guttural vocals. The guitar-centered music, on the other hand, has an almost cheerful melodiousness for the genre. In addition, lost figures scream out of demonic torment, their torn despair through the hopeless emptiness.
VACANT EYES
Also in 2011, Josh Moran began the funeral doom project VACANT EYES in Massachusetts, which grew over the years into a six-piece band. In 2020, her only album to date was released with the title “A Somber Preclusion Of Being”. And what an album it is: not one that exhausts extremes, but one that explores nuances of nameless feelings with infinite sensitivity. Complex, intelligent, but not spiritualized or frivolous, but very close and yet with a certain barrier to entry. Give the album more than one listen and it will eat into your sad existence like maggots through lifeless flesh! Send these artists on a world tour!
LEGAL GUARDIAN
VORMUND from Pennsylvania is played single-handedly by Jason Schlossmann. The first and – apart from a split – current EP “Eidetic” was released in 2020, which has an extremely raw, creaky, rushing, dirty sound that is constantly overdriven and complemented by coarse roars and whining screams. Of course the underground can sound like that, but the awkward drums will be a challenge for even many of the most dreary Funeral Doom fans. So we leave this rotting ulcer in its swampy self and move on.
VOUNA
At the end of our stage, we dive into a very special project with VOUNA. Although Yianna Berkis sometimes uses funeral doom elements, she finds her very own style on the second record “Atropos” (in Greek mythology, the goddess of fate who cuts the threads of life). It mixes Funeral Doom, black metal subgenres such as Cascadian, Atmospheric, post-black metal and blackgaze, folk and gothic metal. And the distant, clear singing gives the whole heavy, deep, big and yet fleeting, floating, opaque music a uniqueness that moves it far away from the genre of our journey, but without losing the connection. Whether acoustic-clear, dark-black or doomy-nihilistic: Berkis has mastered her art in all facets!
So we’ve already reached the initial letter V on our journey through the United States of Funeral Doom Metal and yet we haven’t reached the end. Once once more we will plunge into the desperate darkness before we can leave this hideously painful land.
All stages of our Funeral Doom journey can be found here.
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