This arrived like a hammer-bolt from the blue, tail end of the year, no fucks given about getting on any of those pesky album of year lists and at a time when nobody except kvlt labels and black metal edge-lords are releasing things. Funeral Mist is, as you no doubt know, the solo project of Arioch aka Mortuus of revered Swedish war machine Marduk. We have really missed them too with no studio album since Viktoria back in 2018 and live sorties being curtailed including their show here which was meant to be taking place with Vader in early January. Still 4th Funeral Mist album Deiform is going to fill in the gaps and blow you away whilst doing so. The 7 tracks here are some of the deadliest heard through the plague years and it is evident that a huge amount of time and work has been dedicated to the construction of this formidable beast which we are told deals with “the nature of divinity and mortal existence.” This is does with a huge sound that is multi-layered to the hilt and sounds absolutely monstrous.
It’s a slow orthodox start with plenty of background chanting as ‘Twilight Of The Flesh’ takes form. A stomping slow pound unravels and although there is no speed and urgency at first you know fully well that at some point this 9-minute behemoth will explode. Vocals are craggy and gnarly until a gurgling shrill scream is emitted and drums thunder in, that explosion has arrived and it tears through the speakers like a whirlwind, knocking you flat. The violence is now unleashed and the track tumbles and assaults the listener like a wrecking ball before reversing back to origins, after which there is pretty much no let-up as we continue. A cyclic buzz-saw guitar sound is the next method of attack on ‘Apokalyptikon’ and as the title suggests this shorter, fiery sermon with authoritarian and commanding diatribes spat out vocally is as much of a blitzkrieg as anything encountered by Marduk at full force. Comparisons are bound to be made but all this savagery from just one band member is pretty remarkable. Power, unremitting violence and a huge venomous drive see ‘In Here’ delivering a firestorm, its hell in musical form yet despite this the entwining melody is fantastic once you penetrate the depths.
‘Children Of The Urn’ is nothing short of fantastic. A children’s choir adds a doleful and beguiling nursery rhyme chant to proceedings. One feels like they are in the midst of war, their home and families decimated by utter destruction, alone, cold and frightened. Their chant repeats during the cleave and heft of the track and sounds not unlike it could have escaped from a stage musical. Once heard it will haunt you and be near impossible to shrug off. The layering does strange things to the ears during this and further on it sounds as though there is are different sections of an orchestra playing beneath it all, a clarinet here perhaps and brass parping away later, all skilfully manipulated and making you think your ears are playing tricks on you. The forked-tongue madness of ‘Hooks Of Hunger’ has the vocals on devastating form. We know what brimstone pulpit snarls the singer is capable of but still the downright cursing and spell casting along with the punishing velocity from the music is nothing short of cataclysmic. After delivering a musical scorched earth policy we slow and eerie atmosphere oozes from the crushing title track. It’s a bit of a waltz, a party of the damned and depraved. I can’t help thinking of the debauched atrocities of the 3rd Reich at the end of the war listening to it, knowing they are doomed but having one last godless party before dispatching themselves to hell. Those aforementioned sounds curl around the music making it all the more sinister. As for closer ‘Into Ashes’ well expect one last salvo of unmitigated violence. And with this last two fingered musical salute 2021 can be cast back into the plague pit it crawled out of.. An essential and uncompromisingly intense album.
(9.5/10 Pete Woods)
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