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BLACK FUNERAL
The Dust & Darkness EP

Iron Bonehead Productions (2018)
Rating: 7.5/10

Well, it’s time to dust off the make-up brushes and slap the corpse-paint on because Texas dark lords Black Funeral have returned with another despicable frost bite to the genitals.

Chief clan member Akhtya Nachttoter (a.k.a. Michael W. Ford) remains a potent force within the U.S. black metal scene, and as of the last three years he’s been joined by Australian multi-instrumentalist Azgorh Drakenhof (Drowning The Light / Eternum). Together they make crude, miserable, dissonant noise that sounds as if the recording studio lost its roof and succumbed to winter.

Okay, so while there are way too many black metal bands plying the same trade of terror, Black Funeral – or at least their founding member – has been digging graves and lighting fires since the early 90s, and nine full-length releases have been conjured up in that time.

The Dust & Darkness is a four-track EP that runs for just over sixteen-minutes, but it’s a blizzard that’s not so easy to withstand. Opener ‘Dankuis Daganzipas (Dark Earth)’ begins with an eerie female mantra before the gruesome twosome embarks on building its haunting grey haze of remote guitar seething and clatter-box drums as the vocal swipes and yelps emerge. It’s standard black metal plodding but grisly and fiendish all the same, and one cannot help become embroiled in this terrifying woodland jaunt whereby those sporadic female taunts are injected into the mesh of blackness that emits a foul-smelling, smouldering blast of icy speed.

Such devilish discharges have been all the range since the early to mid’ 90s when this sort of black metal secretion was frazzling churches and scaring parents, but it’s good to know that at its core there’s still a host of darkly clad demons continuing to burrow deep into the light.

‘Alanni Goddess Of The Underworld’ swirls like a nocturnal mantra; wisps of snow swept up in freezing winds as bongo-style drums spurt strange voodoo apparitions before we succumb to a racing drum pattern and wiry guitar skip. It’s fast ‘n’ furious by design as most grim black metal tends to be, with Black Funeral choosing not to opt for any ambience of gimmicks in their quest for unholy acknowledgements. This is straight up frenzy but with distant melodies embedded.

These scarring strands continue with the scratchy chaos of ‘Chemosh Of The Dust And Darkness’, which begins life as an almost non-descript entity before the blaze of guitars and drums smother. Meanwhile, closer ‘Mistress Of The Pit’ is for the most part a haunting soundtrack to end proceedings and to enable you to dust off the cob-webs that have straddled your face. But in brief, the title of this EP pretty much sums up the ingredients provided within this black metal assault.

Neil Arnold

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