Funerus - Festering Earth

Rating: 8.0

Country: USA

Release Date: 2003

Track list:
1. In the Trees
2. DNR
3. Stagnant Seas
4. Suffering Life [MP3]
5. Nebulous Existence
6. Polluted Excess
7. Shade
8. Web of Deceit [MP3]
9. Festering Earth

Band Website: Funerus

Funerus - Festering Earth

Brad Heiple - Guitar, Vocals
Kyle Severn - Drums
Jill McEntee - Bass
John McEntee - Guitar

If there ever existed a death metal colony comprising houses of the Swedish oldies Grave (all pre and including ‘You'll Never See' material) and Carnage (demos), the Dutch Asphyx (‘The Rack') and the British Bolt Thrower (say ‘Warmaster'), the waste that would lead out of their houses and accumulate at a dark sewer below would be Funerus. Colony gossipers tell me that often the jealous Americans - Rottrevore (early material) shat while Infamy and lil' boy Incantation stood and peed shamelessly in the gutter while the sewage was on its way down. Now imagine yourself underground in the main sewer, your motionless body drifting through the thick dark sewage like a bottle…when suddenly, some grotesque hippo with a fetish for sewers emerges from behind and lodges him on top of you. Wasting no time, he begins propelling with his hind legs and then after covering some distance, he slowly looks down at you and cracks an ominous smile that is a metre wide. Right at that precise moment, threatened and oppressed under the weight of his titanic body amidst the repugnant waste, you'd feel best what Funerus would sound like.

Funerus flows at a medium pace throughout, never too fast but steadily, maintaining its viscosity and one would get the feeling of wading through that waist deep sewage upon listening to this album. It carries along the old demo songs as it creeps ahead and soon it become indistinguishable from their newer waste material. At the point where the sewage from those particular houses meet Funerus the concentration is slightly stronger like that of Asphyx in the start, Grave in the middle and Incantation towards the end of this morbidly fascinating ‘Festering Earth' tunnel. During the end marked by the “Festering Earth” signboard you start feeling more vulnerable than ever before. Your eyes bulge out and if you happen to wear glasses then they'd get smeared from the inside, your alert ears stretch outwards to search and decipher every sound wave out there and your mouth opens itself to launch a cry when a thin ray of light reveals itself in the form of a solo coming seemingly from the other end of the tunnel. And it isn't long before you find yourself out of the tunnel and floating in the sea. For a few seconds you are numbed by the drastic change in your surroundings - from the dark and dense, comforting if suffocating ambience inside the ‘Festering Earth' tunnel to being naked out in the calm open sea - but when you start drowning, your brain and limbs get alive. Your brain makes you think that the tunnel ended a bit too soon while your limbs all but start flailing and try to get you back in there as soon as possible.

Now back at home after being unwillingly fished out if I have to think of any shortcomings in my great Funerus experience, I would say that the songs are a bit too short and some even end abruptly. The vocals are decent (he sounds somewhere between Jorgen Sandstrom of early Grave and Mike Saez of latter Incantation) but they could've been more powerful or vicious. Interestingly, now Jill has taken over the vocal duties and here's hoping that she sounds more like that Derketa vocalist rather than the one who did vocals for Sinister and Occult. Sometimes the music is a bit rough around the edges and not executed exactly the way you'd have wanted it to (I guess you could blame those superb bands from whom they have derived their influences to set a very high, almost unfair benchmark) but that should be taken care of in their next album where all the songs will be freshly written. I couldn't help wishing for more leads in this album and I think only two songs have it and one of them being the title song, heh, you know. If played with enough love it could assist the album like a beacon in that pitch dark sewer tunnel. Also more harmonies and hooks in the style of those old Finnish/Swedish bands would be great. I believe there are a couple of such attempts but more of them would make me flap my hands happily and splash sewage water all over me and the hippo above me, although I'm not fully sure whether that would make him smile again or puncture either part of my ass with a single bite.

Before I rush out of my house again, I'd like to say that even with the involvement of Incantation's John (my love!) and Kyle (top notch drumming, as always) Funerus sound little like them. However, a couple of songs towards the end like “Shade” and “Web of Deceit” which unsurprisingly have been co-written by John happen to sound a lot like Incantation. Well, as my cheesy saying goes - you can take John out of Incantation, but you can't take Incantation out of that man. And at least I'm not complaining.

All you fans of raw low-end old school death metal, do yourself a favour and buy this cd right away and please excuse me while I go jump into the nearest open gutter (we are blessed with plenty of them my side) with a shower cap covering my headphones (emitting Funerus of course) and wearing my sewer dwelling heroes Ninja Turtles trunks to derive the maximum feel out of it.

PS: While drifting through the thick black sewage you might get very badly stuck in a frighteningly dense mass of floating hair, but don't panic because its just their drummer Kyle's reputed moustache you've got your body entangled in. If you could locate and rub his bald head, he'd surface and help you out.

August 29th, 2005