Funeral Mourning

Drown in Solitude

Goatwarex 2007

From the unlikely sweltering inferno of Australia comes the Black Metal version of Thergothon in the form of Funeral Mourning.  Funeral Mourning is a side project of members of Pestilential Shadows and to me it is probably even the better of those two musical outfits.  Setting that to the side, Drown in Solitude is a slooooooow and somber slab of funeral doom that reminds me most of the saddened grumblings of Finnish gods Thergothon.  There are two major differences though.  One is that Funeral Mourning is devoid of the low end reverb that made Thergothon so thunderous and the second main difference is the vocals which are raspier echoing black metal vocals rather than the unbelievably deep gurgling of Thergothon's vocalist.  Each song slowly builds it textures utilizing subtlety and minimalism to its full degree with the thought process that "less" can evoke "more" from our fragile emotional states.  My favorite song is Misery Cloaked Under Decayed Flesh which is the musical embodiment of waves of sorrow slowly and softly lapping at the shore of our mental anguish.  This is accomplished through the use of repetitive fuzzed out guitar riffs softly crashing and then letting the white noise filled delay soothe for a split second before once again softly crashing.  All this is held together by tinny and simple drum structures that do nothing more than give a skeleton for the thin and decaying flesh to hang loosely upon.   For the style of music that this album is I would have expected it to be much longer but it clocks in at under 38 minutes.  But I guess that is why my CD player has a repeat button and believe me I have been using it a lot since I received this album.  Funeral Mourning has entranced me with their depression inducing brand of black doom and I am not sure if I can pull myself out from the depths of despair or if I will completely collapse into the endless abyss sorrow.