Marche Funèbre – After The Storm
Marche Funèbre – After The Storm
Ardua Music
Release Date: 27/09/24
Running Time: 43:54
Review by Dark Juan
9/10
Hello, my faithful hordes! It is I, Dark Juan, here to walk you through another album played by people with far more talent than I, who merely writes nonsense about their endeavours. However, I also have been on a phenomenal binge of drinking recently which has left me a little delicate, thanks to my good friend Leigh who dropped off a metric fuckton of booze as a gift for my birthday, and when I was trawling through my review list, I was looking for something that might not exercise my poor, abused grey matter too much, mainly because it is at the point of collapse as too much Pernod was consumed last night and it appears I will be suffering with neurasthenia for the rest of the day. Not even gallons of tea are working to dispel the fog in my brain.
Also, I have been left unattended by Mrs Dark Juan and have released the Platter of Splatter ™ from the cupboard, tied it down and slung a disc upon it – this time it is Belgian “Monarchs of morose majesty” (it sez ‘ere) Marche Funèbre who are being subjected to my (admittedly limited) critical attention.
This record represents the fifth full-length release from these Belgian stalwarts of Gothic Doom Metal, and Dark Juan is excited to hear it because two of his favourite bands are Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride. This is EXACTLY what Marche Funèbre’s music sounds like an amalgamation of. Imagine, if you please, the maudlin melodies of “Draconian Times”, with their long-drawn out guitar lines, and see them welded to the alienation and raw emotion of My Dying Bride around “Turn Loose The Swans”. There are guttural vocals just like Nick Holmes and Aaron Stainthorpe, as well as clean vocals, again like the Yorkshire miserablist benchmarks and Marche Funèbre ably slot themselves into the same morose continuum with considerable ease.
This is not to say that the music is derivative, or a downright copy of these two stalwarts of the Doom scene. Marche Funèbre have a cleaner, more polished production than MDB in particular, who tend towards the bleaker soundscape, and they incorporate a more muscular aesthetic than Paradise Lost who have always vacillated between Gothic sneering and Doom roaring. Marche Funèbre march between the two, incorporating long, soaring guitar lines over slow, monolithic, grinding riffs. It’s not so much music as a slow-moving lava flow accented by the lamentations of women from consumed villages in the path of the molten rock and intense heat. They also, and this is where they differ from the Yorkshire contingent, incorporate some American influences into their sound – Dark Juan can hear the sound of New Yorkers Pist.on and Type O Negative (minus the unique, puckish sense of humour of Peter Steele) bubbling beneath the surface of polished Gothic Doom that Marche Funèbre play. The powerful production, mix and master from Martin Furia (Destruction, Nervosa, Toxik etc) is absolute perfection, however. He has managed to set everything perfectly in the mix – the lead lines of the guitar do not overpower the rhythm work, the bass thunderous and thick but not cloying and the drums to the fore, but not overpoweringly so. My only gripe is that the snare drum has a slightly lifeless sound, it thuds instead of bites, but apart from that, the band sound ALIVE and vibrant.
‘Enter Emptiness’ is arguably the centrepiece of the album – this is the song where all the elements of power and melody coalesce around both clean and guttural vocals and turn it into something far greater than the sum of its parts. It is simply magnificent – the vocals work superbly well with the meaty riffing and bottom end of the music, and it is more a spell of wounded seduction set to a tune rather than a simple song. ‘Stranded’ follows this and has some very delicious twin-guitar soloing that will surely please the Trad Metal fan – the blurb states that it has a magnificent chorus, but I prefer ‘Enter Emptiness’ as the song that defines Marche Funèbre as a band. This isn’t to say that it’s a bad song. It’s just not my favourite.
The album closes out with the title track, ‘After The Storm’, and this is a song that defines the word “epic”, being seven minutes of throat-tearing sorrow set to a slow-burning tempo that seduces as much as it stomps all over beautiful gardens in fucking great combat boots – the combined power of the gutturals of Arne Vanderhoeck and the clean vocals of Kurt Blommé work superbly well at times in this tune when they are both singing together at the same time to offer a new perspective on the lyrics, whereas on the previous songs they have been kept separate and this melding of the two forms lends this song a lot of interest.
To sum up this album then – upon a first, superficial listen, the casual punter might just dismiss Marche Funèbre as My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost copyists and write them off as such. Dark Juan would entreat that person to listen again, more carefully as there is more to discover beneath that similar surface veneer. Now, it should be said that Dark Juan is a colossal fan of Gothic Doom Metal because he’s a pathetic sad romantic and this kind of band always gets his motor revving and Marche Funèbre are no different. The tunes are fucking massive, the singing from both vocalists absolutely top-notch and the whole record deeply satisfying and meaty as fuck, sound-wise, yet maintaining a clarity that is pleasing and easy to listen to – it is this quality, as well as the exemplary songwriting that lift Marche Funèbre from great to special. This is a new classic of the genre which stands up easily to the greats, and Dark Juan considers it an essential purchase.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System (I’m not doing this in different languages this time because I know absolutely ZERO Flemish, and I am not wanting to piss anyone in Belgium off) awards Marche Funèbre 9/10 for a record that will become a classic in its genre eventually. One mark was deducted because a casual listener will merely write them off as yet another bunch of Paradise Lost wannabes, which they aren’t, although their sound does take a lot from Paradise Lost.
TRACKLISTING:
01. In A Haze
02. Palace Of Broken Dreams
03. Devoid Of Empathy
04. Enter Emptiness
05. Stranded
06. After The Storm
LINE-UP:
Arne Vandenhoeck – Vocals
Boris Iolis – Bass/Vocals
Dennis Lefebvre – Drums
Kurt Blommé – Clean Vocals
Fré De Schepper – Guitars
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
