Review: Funeral Leech ‘Death Meditation’
As the darkness swallows the light and envelops the world, you open your eyes to the monolithic nothingness that has surrounded you. You’re alone and only left with the crippling emotion of what your world has become. Funeral Leech perfectly embodies all of the misery and dread that this world has to offer. The New York death doom outfit are ready to unleash their soul crushing debut full length on the unsuspecting masses this April via Carbonized Records.
The last few years have seen some excellent death doom records being released, whether it be 2018’s Ossuarium Silhouettes Unhallowed from genre legends Hooded Menace, last year’s disgustingly good Disgorged From Psychotic Depths from Mortiferum or this year’s monster Totenzug: Festering Peregrination from German maniacs Nekrovault. Funeral Leech have another slab of filth for us all to digest in the form of Death Meditation.
Death Meditation eases you into the record with opener Downpour. Heavy rain and a brooding tone lead you into some creepy keys before laying waste with the records dominating opening riff that sets the albums dense and murky tone. Statues continues the obliteration and features a well written solo that fits the song perfectly. The Burden Of Flesh provides a break in the crushing sound on display. It builds up with these haunting whispers that will stay with you for the rest of your life, coupled with these deep almost Gregorian-esque chants thrown into the mix. It makes for a really intriguing section to the putrid nightmare on display.
The track Lament is the pick of the filth, with nods to Paradise Lost’s genre classic Gothic and Winter’s Into Darkness. The group wear their influences on their Asphyx longsleeves. It perfectly nails what a death doom track should sound like, the mammoth riffs that groove along, the savagely heavy drums which sound like the snare is going to split at any moment and the cavernous vocals that would not be mistaken from being spewed out of the mouth of some giant ogre like creature.
The production on Death Mediation is just perfect, it’s dirty, murky and earth shatteringly heavy just as it should be…
Huge respect to Lucas Anderson who does double duty on vocals and drums similar to Max from Tomb Mold. The production on Death Mediation is just perfect, it’s dirty, murky and earth shatteringly heavy just as it should be. It even has traits from the funeral doom genre with its despair like samples mentioned earlier.
The records artwork is incredible. It looks really simple from afar but the detail and depth close up is really nice to see and fits the record perfectly. Hats off too Karmazid for producing this. This record is a decayed hell-scape. It’s cliché to say but I really do think this could be a potential for the end of year lists. It’s a really solid record that I can see a lot of people enjoying and hopefully pushes Funeral Leech to the forefront of the death doom conversation.
It’s hard to pinpoint any major negatives, my only small gripe is that the transition between tracks could sometimes be smoother rather than just a flat break in sound, but this is really minor and should take nothing away from the quality on display.
So what are you waiting for, you need to check out this record but watch the foundations of your house because this is a heavy one! If this record tickles your biscuit then you should check out as mentioned earlier in the review 2020’s Totenzug: Festering Peregrination by Nekrovault which is equally as disgusting and heavy.
Label: Carbonized Records
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Scribed by: Matt Alexander