Funeral The Funereal EP Review
Fresh off the hallowed heels of what I swear is their magnum opus, the harrowing, soul-draining, cathedral-collapsing “Gospel of Bones”, Norway’s architects of abjection, Funeral, return to us just months later with an offering so bleak, so beautifully barren, it should come with a black veil and a disclaimer.
“The Funereal EP” is no throwaway. I thought it might be at first, maybe a spectral leftover gnawed off the ribcage of G.O.B., but no, this is a separate beast, starved and sharpened, crawling with its own gravity. It’s three movements long, but let’s not pretend we’re dealing with "songs" here. This is one colossal mass, split into three slow exhalations titled “Gamalt ljós”, or “Old Light”, a name that sounds like a memory you forgot to grieve.
According to the press kit the title refers to past hopes and unreachable absolutes, which feels about right. This is not the kind of music you dance to. This is the kind of music you collapse beneath.
And let me confess I was late to the funeral. Back in the mid-’90s, while I was wrapped in the gloom of My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost, Funeral slipped past me like a shadow at dusk. But “Gospel of Bones” dragged me back in last year with its mournful majesty, and now, I’m borderline obsessed.
Where G.O.B. felt like a final sermon, “The Funereal EP” feels like an echo that never ends. The major shift here, the growls, those infernal, abyssal bellows are louder, more primal, more... animal. But they don’t detract. Hell no. They anchor this sinking ship in deeper waters.
What Funeral do better than nearly anyone else in this godforsaken genre is immaculate composition. The strings, the symphonics, the violins, God help me, they are gorgeous enough to carve open your chest. And then you’ve got Anders Eek, whose voice should be registered as an emotional weapon. His clean vocals are not of this earth. They rise like a solemn psalm from beneath centuries of rot and ruin.
Each section of “Gamalt ljós” bleeds into the next. There are no hard edges, only currents, waves of sorrow crashing into silence and crawling back again. This isn’t a record you listen to; it’s one you drown in.
And just when you think it’s safe to cry in peace, they hit you with an acoustic rendition of “Når Kisten Senkes”, a track so tender it feels like being sung to by the angel of death herself. Eek, once again, delivers a performance that’s both intimate and monumental, like whispering your sins into the Grand Canyon.
In short, this isn’t just one of the best EPs in the genre right now. It’s a holy relic for those of us who worship at the altar of slow, sorrowful collapse. Funeral, have proven, yet again, that they are not merely participating in the Funeral Doom scene, they are conducting it.