|
By JEFF MAKI
Ah, sunny L.A. Home to the famous Sunset Strip, Hollywood, Beverly Hills and the stars. Somewhere underneath all the shiny, movie-star shit you see on TV, there is a man waiting to take his Norwegian black metal band to the unholy heights of extreme metal. His name is John. Yep, John, and he fronts the band The Funeral Pyre, who sound as if they are illegitimate sons of the northern darkness. And no, The Funeral Pyre is not Norweigian, but after one spin of The Nature of Betrayal, you would automatically assume they are. You'd think with a sound that borders on hell itself, you could come up with a better name than John. Maybe Lord Pyre or Plague might work. (I want copyrights if anyone uses these, by the way.) But no, we get John on vocals, James on guitar, Alex on drums, a fantastic female keyboard player in Daniella and Adam on bass.
The Funeral Pyre's eight songs of blackened metal fury are pure fucking evil, mind you. These guys must worship Emperor and Gorgoroth, as it is the only explanation for this style coming out of Los Angeles. The eight songs here are sonic blasts featuring all the black metal trademarks: high treble, shrieking vocals, haunting keys and walls of guitar, minus corpse paint or obvious blasphemy. Lyrics are more death metal in nature, telling of the dying world in which they are cursed to live. Is it that bad? It must be, because the Pyre shows no mercy on the listener, save for a few moments of piano and atmosphere. As for the execution, the band knows how to play black metal, and they kick a lot of ass doing it. Now the question is, will anyone listen? Black metal fans are close minded in the first place and will no doubt refuse to listen to black metal from California. While fans of extreme metal music will find some things here to their liking, why would they choose The Funeral Pyre when they have countless Scandinavian bands to listen to?
Still, praise is due to both the band and Prosthetic Label for releasing something like this out of the States. If nothing else, it's surely one of the most musically extreme albums I've heard in some time. My feeling is just that if you're gonna do it, then go all the way. I'm not advocating the burning of churches or anything like that, but if something goes up in smoke out in L.A., I'll know who to look for. It'll just be our little secret.
|
