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FUNEST
Desecrating Obscurity

Memento Mori (2014)
Rating: 7.5/10

How on earth can an Italian band sound so Swedish? And secondly, how can one desecrate obscurity? Okay, so I’m being petty here, but there’s no doubting Funest’s obsession with that classic Swedish death metal sound; the riffs are akin to an out of control heavyweight chainsaw. In fact, just one listen to this debut album and you’d be thinking you’d stepped into 1991, such is the mouldy textures of this blasphemous project.

Funest have only been around since 2012, but already they’ve mastered the unholy, blood-congealed art of linking together buzz-saw riffs, chesty vocals and sickening melody with an Autopsy-styled horror.

I actually like this 12-track lump of gristle because despite its lack of originality it harbours such a stuffy, funereal quality and appears as a genuine resurrection of a style of extreme metal that I just cannot get enough of. Do we really need another band of this ilk though? Well, in some instances yes, if the concoction is correct. After all, one may as well slap on those old Entombed albums rather than listen to this, but I’ve always got time for a vomit-spattered piece of vinyl when it’s this rotten.

Those extreme metal aficionados among you may be interested to know that Johan Jansson (Interment, Dellamorte, Centinex, Demonical) provides guest vocals on two tracks, the best of these being the terrific ‘Fornicate The Deceased’ which rumbles, rattles and throws discarded limbs at you like merry old Entombed. The riff is generic but frothingly killer, while the drums pound the life out of the hapless decapitated heads which have been assembled to form a kit.

‘Fornicate The Deceased’ is the pivotal track on the album; backing up the mid-section and featuring an Autopsy-style of gore, guts and horror in the solo department. But it doesn’t matter what cyst you extract from this gruesome opus, as each one will provide you with the same blood-clotted joy you first experienced when you heard the likes of Grave, Unleashed, Dismember and Massacre all those foetid years ago.

“Nausea reigns” vomits M. on the ghoulish doom-laden echoes of ‘Buried And Forsaken’ amid a torrential wail of clammy riffs and soiled percussion, and the vocalist is equally joyful on the rancid guffaw of ‘Marching On Dead Angels’ and my favourite disemboweller ‘Catacomb Torture (Mutilator From The Grave)’ in which he gurgles, “Cut his throat, Rape his sluts, Cut his tongue, Burn his cross” in lively fashion.

Desecrating Obscurity is a simple nod to the death metal old school and doesn’t try to be anything else. So, for a sincere trip into the realms of decay why not grab yourself a severed head and bang the same blood-soaked drum as these demented disciples of death metal.

Neil Arnold

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