Funeral doom

The funeral doom or funeral doom metal is a subgenre of doom metal characterized by taking the times of death/doom and black/doom to an extreme degree of heaviness and slowness. In this way, it brings the atmosphere of desolation and despair typical of doom metal to its maximum expression. Growls and distortions are frequently used. The term comes from the fact that its sound would fit perfectly in a burial or a mortuary procession.

Some representative bands of funeral doom are Mournful Congregation from Australia; UK Esoteric; Evoken from the United States; Norwegian funeral; Shape of Despair, Thergothon and Skepticism from Finland; Corrupted from Japan; Frowning from Germany and Funeris from Argentina.

Features

This is an extremely slow, heavy death/doom, with sordid and extremely depressive atmospheres. The songs are long, although without reaching the extremes of drone doom (in which a piece can reach an hour in length). However, there are exceptions, such as the Monolithe I album by the band Monolithe in which the only song lasts 52 minutes. The instruments are the basics of heavy metal. The percussions are scarce due to the slow rhythm and the voices are guttural although in some cases recitations are included. Certain bands include black metal influences. The riffs are consistent with traditional doom metal although much slower and more aggressive.

History

Origins

Despite the fact that in 1990, the album Into Darkness by the American band Winter brings together all the characteristics of what would later be known as funeral doom, together with the Cathedral EP, In Memorium, they have not been credited with founding the subgenre. It is Thergothon who is credited and the subgenre tag is probably related to the version of the song Electric Funeral by Black Sabath on their independent EP Abysmal Dimensions, released in 1991.

In the context of the rise of the subgenre, bands like Obituary and Deicide, Napalm Death and Carcass dominated the global extreme metal scene, with their fast rhythms and guttural vocals. Grindcore and death metal ruled the metal world under the auspices of labels such as Nuclear Blast Records, Century Media Records and Earache Records, and it looked as though things were going to stay that way. However, around the same time, Lee Dorrian, who had left Napalm Death in 1989, influenced by the music of classic doom metal bands such as Trouble, Dream Death, Pentagram and Witchfinder General, founded the pioneering death/doom and stoner doom band., Cathedral. With a magical formula that combined his grindcore and death metal influence with the slow and heavy rhythms of doom metal, he releases a demo with four songs of unusual slowness. It would not take long for this new musical style, coined with In Memorium, along with Winter's first album already mentioned, to establish itself as a musical genre. Thergothon were one of the first bands to understand the dimensions of that Lee Dorrian experiment. In November 1991 they released the demo Fhtagn-nagh Yog-Sothoth bringing to the slow and heavy sound of Cathedral, with songs like Elemental, Evoken and Yet the Watchers Guard, which gave greater definition to what later became known as funeral doom, as not a large part, but all of its songs, were extremely slow and heavy.

Emergence and consolidation

Soon Thergothon would attract attention as the founder of the subgenre and other bands from the region in which it operated, such as the Finnish Skepticism and the Norwegian Funeral would become the first best-known representatives of this subgenre. Although the Funeral band was formed in 1991 in the vein of death metal, it was not until the end of 1994 that they managed to release their first complete album Tragedies, by Freedom Finland, already completely immersed in doom metal, becoming one of the most popular funeral doom records. This album would be followed by others of the quality of In Fields of Pestilential Grief (2002) or From These Wounds (2007), although in the latter it abandons the funeral doom for a gothic doom metal with clean voices in some cases female as in others male. For its part, Skepticism began in 1992 with Towards My End, also in the vein of death metal. In 1994 he released the demo Aeothe Kaear already within funeral doom and in 1995 he managed to release his first LP under the aegis of Red Stream Records, Stormcrowfleet. This work would be followed by others such as Lead and Aether (1998) and Farmakon (2003) in the pure vein of funeral doom.

Another pioneering band of funeral doom is the also Finnish Shape of Despair, formed in 1995 as Raven and whose instruments include violin and flute.

In less than a decade funeral doom was consolidated as a subgenre of doom metal with bands of the quality of Funeral, Worship, Monolithe and Mournful Congregation, or other more modern ones like Ahab.