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Funeral: Tristesse / Tragedies

13/02/09 || Daemonomania

So Funeral are like, THE funeral doom band. Early pioneers of the style – you can always tell who they are by the band name. Like Grave, for instance – I’m sure hundreds of metal bands today are wondering, “fuck, if we had only come out a few years earlier, we could have been Grave!”. Back on the subject of Funeral: too bad all you other slower than slow bands, these Norwegians beat you to it. And since they had two band members die in a three-year period, I guess they deserve the band name even more. Talk about grim.

On to the review. This is a double disc which covers their 1993 release “Tristesse” and their 1995 release “Tragedies.” Plus some bonus songs from their “Beyond all sunsets” demo. Funeral incorporate many of the stylistic touches that are quite common in today’s post-mortem practitioners: tempos that crawl, beastly low growls juxtaposed with clean vocals, and melodies that would have made even the late Charles Bronson shed a tear (right before he blasted your guts out with a shotgun).

What sets them apart is a heavy use of classical guitar pickin’ during their intros, a very clean sound (far away from the crushing style of such bands as Evoken and Ahab), and some VERY pretty clean female vocals – at least on “Tragedies.” It is the voice of Toril Snyen that brings the second disc in for the touchdown. Indeed, there’s a lot more quality to be found in their ’95 release than in their earlier output. “Tristesse” has a dude doing clean vocals, and he sounds like a Benedictine monk after someone performed a primitive lobotomy upon him using Delirium Tremens beer as an antiseptic. Plus, the aforementioned classical guitar parts have absolutely nothing to do with the songs on the first one, and if memory serves me right the pickin’ just ends after a few moments on each track, giving the doomily distorted guitars that follow an oddly disjointed feeling. Not to mention the songwriting is pretty weak – a lot of repetition but not the good, hypnotic kind. The fluff your pillow and set your alarm clock kind.

Now take all of what I just said about “Tristesse” and throw it out the window for “Tragedies.” To recap: cleans handled by an ethereal female vocalist, classical guitar parts more woven into the rest of the piece, and songs which really take hold of the listener and make you think about being doomed, experiencing some tragedies, and attending your own funeral, on a cold day, in Norway. Bummer. But an excellent bummer, if you’re a fan of tunes designed to inflict maximum depression.

Today it seems that Funeral is more a melodic doom/death metal band, but once upon a time these guys gave an industry-standard and pretty damn mesmerizing performance and left their mark (and moniker) on a whole subgenre. This split album is not only good for a historical reference for one of doom’s bastard children, but the second disc puts the fun back in fun-eral.

So, if I had to average the whole thing out, I can safely say 7.5 coiners of the phrase out of 10.

Information
Released: 2006
Label: Firebox
Website: www.funeralband.no
Band
Anders Eek: vocals, drums, guitars
Thomas Angell: guitars
Einar Fredriksen: bass, vocals
Toril Snyen: vocals (on “Tragedies”)

Tracklisting
Tragedies:
01. Taarene
02. Under Ebony Shades
03. Demise
04. When Nightfall Clasps
05. Moment in Black
06. Forlorn
Tristesse:
01. Thoughts of Tranquillity
02. A Poem for the Dead
03. Yearning for Heaven
04. Heartache
05. Dying (Together as one)

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