1349 & FUNERAL MIST: THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING GRIM
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 at 10:14am by Sammy O'Hagar
1349’s Hellfire was pretty damn close to a perfect black metal album: nothing but top notch frostbitten riffs played at grindcore speed with Ravn’s lunatic vocals over them and production grimy enough to evoke the necessary rawness but not obscure the music at its heart. At once precise and uncompromising, the album eschewed the genre’s weak points and simply tore the guts out of whomever cared to listen. Much like Anaal Nathrakh, Hellfire was an example that I pointed to when people dismissed black metal as a poor/embarrassing man’s death metal.
Of course, this may be the bulk of the weight in my big ol’ bag of fucking disappointment with the band’s follow up to Hellfire, Revelations of the Black Flame. Just when the band were appearing to be brutal enough to ascend black metal’s negative connotations, Black Flame finds them taking an unfortunately masturbatory turn into the realm of avant-garde black metal, at once trying to challenge the norms and boundaries of black metal while embracing its most ridiculous aspects.
I suppose I can appreciate the conceit of Revelations of the Black Flame (hence the extra half horn I‘m awarding it): a blackened oddball of an album designed to blow minds and make the worshippers at the altar of Hellfire (like yours truly) and Liberation uncomfortable, perhaps angry. But what sets out to be a journey to the outer reaches of black metal actually amounts to a bunch of guys in corpse paint in their grandparents’ back yard playing with flashlights after dark. I can appreciate ambient black metal, but Black Flame doesn’t go anywhere. It promises to several times – the tremolo picked buildup in “Invocation,” the jagged guitars of “Uncreation” – but quickly extinguishes itself in lieu of more grim exercises and pointless ambient noise. When it does finally remind you of who 1349 were, it’s with the by-the-numbers “Maggot Fetus… Teeth Like Thorns,” and making that Black Flame’s black metal focal point causes the album to collapse into a shapeless mess of (admittedly occasionally interesting) dark ambient textures and shards of what could have been decent songs. There’s nothing of value to grab on to on Revelations of the Black Flame, no matter how much 1349 seem to think there is. Even a charred mess of a Pink Floyd cover (“Set Controls for the Heart of the Sun”) can’t score them obscurity points.
But this is not to say that adherence to a set of rules passed down from a bunch of frosty Norwegians 20 years ago is the way to make a great black metal album in 2009: messing with its DNA is still one’s best chance at making an impact. And that’s why Funeral Mist’s Maranatha – despite the vehement protesting from truer-than-thou crowd that object to it being different from 2003’s Salvation – is so fucking flooring: though still wedded to black metal hallmarks, its dalliances and experimentations make it a delightful mindfuck that sounds like no other black metal album you’ve heard. Main-man/only-man Arioch doesn’t shy away from going places that make the listener uncomfortable, even if at the expense of their patience or the more feeble-hearted ones altogether. It’s brilliantly unflinching, and in a genre dedicated to formulaic construct, it’s a strong breeze’s worth of fresh air.
Maranatha is a cluster of warm, fluttering tremolo picked guitars, angry moaning and bellowing (nary a banshee rasp to be found!), strange choir samples and vocal manipulations, and alternating blast beats and dalliances into near post-rock-style micro-riffs and drone (the strangely and unexpectedly understated outro of “Jesus Saves!” being the best example). But this is by no means a subtly beautiful outing a la Wolves in the Throne Room or Drudkh: Funeral Mist is ugly as fuck, right down to its profoundly disturbing fundamentalist Christian samples (“Blessed Curse,” a fairly mediocre song that goes on a few minutes longer than it should, is launched into the fucking stratosphere by a sample of a fire-and-brimstone sermon played over the main riff). And each song is tinged with its own set of experiments, setting it completely apart from the one before it. Some of the directions Maranatha goes into are more puzzling than effective, and it’s hard to tell if, as a whole, Maranatha is a brilliant mess or just a mess. But it is certainly an entertaining and unique mess, and certainly worth a shot. While 1349 are apparently content with stumbling around in the dark in an attempt to experiment, Funeral Mist walk through it confidently, wearing whatever they may step in with pride.
Revelations of the Black Flame
(1 ½ out of 5 horns)
Maranatha
(4 out of 5 horns)
-SO
Words can’t describe how disappointed I was with 1349’s new album. I mean, it’s not horrendous, and some of the tracks (namely the Pink Floyd cover and the first track) are actually pretty cool. However, beyond that, they essentially made a bunch of monotonous noise with some very underplayed raw black metal sprinkled in.
I’m all for experimenting. I am, however, not ok with boring music. Had the band maybe gone with a more lush production they could have been onto something, as it stands, the album isn’t much more than background noise. I’m interested to hear what they do next though, as it really could be great. God knows they have the talent.
On the plus side, Ravn’s vocals sound pretty awesome throughout the disc.
I concur fully.
I disagree on 1349’s new album. I think it’s good, but just not as good as the new funeral mist.
Haven’t listened to either of these yet, but I was interested in 1349’s Pink Floyd cover just because Tom G. Warrior played guitar and bass on it.
Is that a vagina with an eye looking out of it on the Maranath cover?
Nice to see others also appropriate bashing for an embarrassing shell of a new album. Hopefully 1349 (mostly Archaon) will take their creative mind’s out of Satyr’s ass and make some real music next time around.
The new 1349 rubbed me the wrong way as well, though I did appreciate their attempt to break out of their corpsepaint-smeared pigeonhole and actually experiment with a tempo other than, uh, nonstop blasting. They veered into the avant-garde basically by ripping off the other bands who have been doing it better, for longer (evidenced by the blatant Deathspell Omega-esque parts and self-indulgent “atmospheric” elements). Also, the last track dragged on way too fucking long. I’ll be interested to see how the band incorporates the new tuns into their set. When all’s said and done, though, it will still probably be cooler than 98% of the other records that come out this year.
Also, Funeral Mist rules. Their particular brand of filthy, Christ-fucking raw black metal has been enthralling purveyors of this particular style (i.e. me) for years, and the new outing is yet another lesson in concentrated brutality and barely-controlled chaos. I can’t avoid being that asshole that insists their 1998 EP “Devilry” was their career high point (seriously, just listen to it!!), but as far as I’m concerned, “Maranatha” is a more than worthy successor. Blessed are the sick, indeed.
This is an example of 1349 trying to follow suit with what Marduk did on their last album (than again, 1349 have always just tried to copy Marduk). The difference is that ROM 5:12 was perhaps the greatest album that Marduk ever made, maybe even better than Opus Nocturne, while RotBF is utterly boring crap. It was surprisingly mature despite the fact that it came from a band who previously excelled for years at being complete volume fetishists and little more.
Is it anyone’s surprise that 1349 have now decided to stop playing norsecore and attempted to make a mature album. And given their unoriginality, is it anyone’s surprise that they failed? Consider this the letdown of the year. Then again, 1349 never did anything that Marduk didn’t do better.
I was very surprised to see that 1349 came out with a new album, and bummed at the bad review. I have yet to listen to it, but going on what the reviews are, I will say this . . .
For any band that is known for their intensity they are unfortunately setting their fans up for disappointment because it is only inevitable that they will reach their pinnacle of “chaos” and have to change their coarse in some way. It just seems 1349 steered the wrong direction.
I never truly understood ambient black metal (like Deathspell Omega) to be anything more then a novelty. Indeed it’s “neat” to listen to it on YouTube and say to oneself, “yeah those guys sure are obscure and grim” but in the end I would much rather listen to the crafted guitar solos of Shining.
First time i agree with a review from metalsucks. Funeral Mist is so far the Black Metal highlight of 2009
You should check out Altar of Plague’s White Tomb if you enjoy the Wolves in the Throne Room style of black metal.
That’s probably the black metal highlight of 2009 so far, for me personally.
Never cared much for 1349 (you hear one of their songs, you’ve heard 95% of the rest of them), but Maranatha is easily one of the greatest metal records of all time. It’s not easy to follow up the sheer brilliance of Devilry and Salvation, but Arioch definitely stepped it up a notch. ‘Living Temples’ is a great example of that; the choir sample sends shivers down my spine each and every time. A lot of people bitched about the album when it first leaked, some don’t like the huge amount of vocals effects he uses (even though it fits the music perfectly), but all they need to do is listen to the last couple of Marduk albums, and they would know he’s quite a competent singer.