Funeral

Funeral don’t have a lot of material for a band that’s been around more than a decade-and-a-half, and somehow I’ve managed to hear none of it before their latest, From These Wounds, which is only their third full-length. If the name and title aren’t a dead giveaway it only takes a few chords before a cloak of gloom begins to descend and the darkness becomes pervasive on this album. These aren’t cheery ditties or pumped up tirades, they’re melancholy reflections. Like a cross between the mellow side of Novembers Doom and the slower side of Daylight Dies, with allusions to My Dying Bride, Funeral are heavy in passing more than in substance, and the crooned and thickly layered vocal melodies are soothing rather than cathartic. From These Wounds is music to wallow in, and on those grounds it fares very well.