It’s the weekend! What better way to get it started than with the latest installment of “Funeral Doom Friday”. This weekly column looks to shed some light onto some of the darkest, most depressing, and discordant metal out there. Funeral Doom stems from the deepest depths of death-doom and dirge music. Each week, my goal is to highlight some of the newest music or rediscover classic works from some of the earliest bands and originators such as Australia’s Mournful Congregation, United States’s Evoken, UK’s Esoteric and the Finnish Thergothon. Feel free to share your opinions and suggestions in the comments!
Great and promising bands can emerge from the deepest recesses of a scene. Their discoveries are diamonds in a rough that is littered with worship acts and unoriginal music. They can be found, opening for more notable bands, or have an album floating around on the internet somewhere, maybe a friend passes along something they found. For Vancouver's Temple of Abandonment, they had a demo put on Bandcamp at the end of March. An entity amalgamated beyond the mere individuals who make up its structure; the recent Funeral Doom band has caught the ear of lucky listeners with their first work, From Outer Spheres… Death. The thirty-two-minute construct combines many of the elements from major works by other Funeral Doom bands like Esoteric or Evoken and smashes them headlong into the wall of sounds of Death Metal bands like Grave or Dismember.
From Outer Spheres… Death consists of one song of the same name. Much of the opening quarter of the demo is solemn and tempered. It is a slow build into the meat of the song. The vocals ease their way into the track (as much as ghastly howls can ease their way into anything) and the ashen intensity of Temple of Abandonment begins to grow. By the ten-minute mark, "From Outer Spheres… Death" evolves into a funeral demon. The vocal range opens up and waves of feedback plume from the ground laid by menacing bass and drums over the next ten to fifteen minutes. Throughout the final quarter of the demo, it becomes a colossal exhibit of Death-Doom and dirge that throws the final shovel-full of dirt onto the coffin of the listener.
Colton Bills at CVLT Nation saw Temple of Abandonment perform back on March 24th in Vancouver. They opened for fellow Funeral Doom newcomers, Un, and immediately became a fan of the band. He stated their performance "…was an astral experience – subtle, yet commanding your attention, it turned and twisted and drew me in with its mystique." I quickly became a fan too after discovering the same demo they performed. Early signs point to the Vancouver quartet becoming a staying force in Funeral Doom. Discovering their horrifying projection of lament has been a highlight of 2016 thus far and stands to be one of the best releases the crippling subgenre has to offer this year. Check out their Bandcamp page and purchase the demo for one Canadian dollar (which is seventy-six cents in the United States). It is going to be the best dollar you spend this year. I am willing to put another dollar on that.
