Brand new on eMusic on a Saturday(!): The Best Metal Record of 2009, Funeral Mist’s Maranatha!.
I actually yelped when I saw this in Freshly Ripped today. I have been obsessed with this record for months, going so far as to try to track down the digital distributor to see if we could get it for the site. I bought the 200g Import-Only 2xLP. Man oh man, do I love this record.
Extreme metal is a hard sell for a million obvious reasons, so if you already know that it’s not your thing, this record is probably not going to change your mind. However, if you’re even remotely intrigued by Satanic Black Metal, or think that you might be, you just don’t know where to start, Maranatha! is the record for you.
To dispense quickly with some biographical information: Funeral Mist is essentially a side project of Arioch who, under the name Mortuus, is also the lead vocalist for longtime outstanding blasphemers Marduk (Arioch/Mortuus stepped up to the mic in 2004, with the group’s white-knuckle horror show Plague Angel). I can’t give a good explanation for why dude has two different names, except to say that sometimes, you know, being a Satanist is complicated.
Anyway.
Black metal has a way of being confining — all of those hammering, one-on-top-of-the-other riffs create a kind of claustrophobia that, while essential to the music’s overall tone of panic, can be a bit exhausting over long stretches. Maranatha! works because its assault is never relentless. It may rocket out of the gate, with the psychotic drilling of “Sword of Faith!”, but it lets up almost immediately. “White Stone” is a slow churner, grimy guitar riffs slithering like shiny black asps over thumping percussion. The arrangements are fascinating and considered, too — it’s not just jetpack guitars and heart-attack percussion — there are grim Satanic choirs and searing, requiem-like orchestral sections. Unlike a lot of other black metal records, the songs here actually have movements, progressing from relentless pound to long, gut-wrenching moans.
The astonishing (and, sorry, album-only) “Blessed Curse” begins with a thick film of guitars and a long passage of wild-eyed and seriously threatening Christian preaching, an icy guitar line arcing up over the din. A single melodic theme is repeated over and over and over, gradually gaining in force and power — Arioch ranting like a man possessed (which, let’s face it, he probably is), until the whole thing goes up in a puff of thick, sulfuric smoke. A weird, witchy choir winds their way through the background of “Living Temples,” shrieking and braying. As a bonus, Marantha! also begins better than any other album released this year, with the sound of a panicked Pentecostal preacher yelling, “It’s the blood! It’s the blood! It’s the blood!”
It doesn’t hurt that, throughout the record, Arioch takes passages from the Bible and inverts them, giving sacred text nefarious meaning. “My heart is fixed, O lord,” he grunts in “Anti-Flesh Nimbus,” “My veins are prepared to receive thy venom… I open my chest, and my word shall devour flesh.” In the bleak and ironic “Jesus Saves!” he cries, “”And the son of falsehood shall shine with trust, from the depths of Satan in the name of God / Jesus Saves! Jesus Saves! / Eat now his flesh and inject the venom in his name.”
So, yeah, serious stuff. But also as chilling and riveting as video footage of an exorcism. Metal fans, rejoice: your savior has come.
Any chance that the Quest for Fire album will show up?
Definitly one of the best If not the best Metal rock Album I’ve Heard This Year!!
I’ll give it a listen, but over at my house the Best Metal Record award is already reserved for Dysrhythmia’s head-exploding “Psychic Maps” (which I had to buy from Amazon ’cause eMusic doesn’t have it) or possibly Isis’s “Wavering Radiant” (which eMusic does have, yay.)
I’m a total noob at this “metal” stuff, though, and I’m actively looking for other good albums.
The music is ok, but I’d rather hear someone who can sing.
@Seth: I was wondering that myself — I’ll see what I can find out.
@Jens: I’m kind of new to metal, too, actually — I’ve only really been into it for the last maybe 4 years or so. See what you think of the Funeral Mist record, and I’m gonna try to track down the Dusrhythmia so I can give it a listen.
So… this sounds good but I get burned on the metal oftentimes because I like the music but dislike the cookie monster vocals? What sort of vocals do we have here? Because if it’s not just the same old CM stuff I’d be down to hear this. I like Mastodon’s new one, for instance but Isis not so much.
Ryan: the vocals aren’t so much cookie monster as they are straight demonic. Arioch has mastered a kind of sick, Satanic grunt. The arrangements are so interesting that I think they overcome whatever you may not like about the vocals — there’s a real intensity to the songs here.
I’ll check it out – but off the top of my head I have to give a nod to the new Kylesa and Keelhaul albums (both available on eMu, I believe) as my personal front-runners for top metal album. But hey, what the hell do I know. …