Funus – MONO
Funus – MONO
Self-Released
Release Date: 25/02/23
Running Time: 36:00
Review by Dark Juan
9/10
The sun is shining through the window of Crow Cottage and Dark Juan is cowering behind the last vestige of shadow in the corner, as far as he can get away from the caustic rays and hunched over his laptop (surprisingly not in a state of indiscretion at this time) avoiding the fuck out of it, for Dark Juan is a creature of the night, a predator of the inky, Stygian blackness and a hunter and haunter of the young and the beautiful. The Smellhounds, however, are fucking loving it and are spread-eagled on the lounge floor baking themselves and emitting the kind of stench that would normally emanate from the Apothecarion of a Traitor Space Marine legion, and Mrs Dark Juan is currently engaged in making a fez for an oversized turkey’s head.
Yes, you DID read the last part of that sentence correctly. To be fair, I don’t care if Mrs Dark Juan makes it a felt replica of an M3 tactical helmet or a fucking tracked, armoured vehicle to live in (to be fair, the pub next door to Crow Cottage does have a Scimitar CVR(T) completed with 30mm Rarden cannon parked in the car park. No, I am not joking, it is absolutely true) as long as I am rid of the baleful, glassy, dead stare of a mounted turkey’s head, several times above life-sized out of my fucking lounge and into the Turk’s Head pub where it belongs and where it can upset the good patrons of that hostelry instead. It’s seriously messing with my karma, dudes, dudettes and dudekin (which is a word I have just made up to cover the other genders – Dark Juan is nothing if not inclusive and a friend to you, regardless of which sexuality or gender you identify with) and I need it out of my house. Birds are fucking weird anyway, being as they are basically the nth generation of (mostly) flying dinosaurs.
Today, the roving Dark Juan Platter of Splatter™ is visiting the Netherlands, and a one-man musical project (yes, another ridiculously talented bastard who can do it all by themselves and makes mere mortals like Dark Juan feel vastly inadequate) by Ruben Vermeulen which is called Funus. Interestingly, Ruben was a practitioner of the dark arts of Black Metal, once upon a time, yet Funus is not like this. Funus operate in a softer, more melancholic musical wave that encompasses the likes of Opeth- style Prog Metal (‘Soul Faced’), the acoustic led tortured lamenting of the likes of Swans (‘Gloom and Dusk’, ‘Would You’) and the ambient, sweeping atmospherics of (also Dutch, and once featuring the absolutely GLORIOUS Anneke Van Giersbergen) The Gathering.
So, yes, here we have navel-gazing Gothic Rock, melancholic Shoegaze, Progressive Metal elements and lots of intricate acoustic guitar work. It was somewhat of a surprise to Dark Juan, who had deliberately not listened to the album before reporting on it so he could listen without prejudice. ‘Embracings Relived’ is a spectacularly Gothic piece of music, chock-full of wispy, whooshing atmospheric synths overlaid with increasingly complex acoustic guitars, layered upon each other and a gorgeous, lamenting female vocal courtesy of Sabina Knol – if Lindsay Schoolcraft was nearby she could have written this with extra harp. But not cowbell.
‘Orb of Inner Voices’ and ‘Soul Faced’ are the songs on offer that are most of interest to the Metal listener, both of which manage to reference the Gothic Prog stylings of Opeth, Alcest’s Neige and his subsequent captaining of his own unusual musical ship and the sweeping vastness of the sound of The Gathering AT THE SAME TIME – both songs are unhurried Gothic explorations of feelings and pain with meaty, yet never overstated electric guitar and multi-tracked, layered vocals that beguile and seduce the listener into the world of sorrow that Ruben appears to live in. Poor Ruben. Lad needs to get out more…
Another tune of considerable interest to the Metal-leaning readers of this nonsense is ‘Never Heard’ which somehow welds the Punkish teenage fury of Troublegum-era Therapy? with the universe-spanning sense of depth that Swans used to display with such tortured ease when Michael Gira decided to unleash the angst with electric guitar as well as acoustic. The acoustic guitar on this song is a particularly emotional and surprisingly empowered thing, where you would expect it to be buried underneath the walls of electric alchemy and as the song progresses we again dip into the melancholy Gothic-tinged Progressive music that Opeth perform so valiantly.
Production-wise, this record is absolutely faultless! Especially the treatment of the acoustic guitar, which is never overwhelmed by the other instruments. It would have been so easy to crank up the distortion and drown the acoustic under waves of aggression but that would have been a disservice to the sheer quality of the playing and also the arrangements of the songs. This is an artful record indeed, a masterclass in arrangement, production and performance. Everything is judged with such perfect discernment in terms of what could have been (and I will be honest, Dark Juan expected it to be) a colossal experiment in self-aggrandisement and dick-waving, and your faithful ersatz rock hack is supremely impressed and will be prostrating himself and salaaming piously at the feet of Ruben Vermeulen for quite some time to come because the man is a musical fucking GENIUS and his music travels right up Dark Juan’s spine and sits at the back of his awareness, busily shaking his hypothalamus and getting some endorphins out there.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System (het gepatenteerde Dark Juan bloedspatten beoordelingssysteem voor onze Nederlandse vrienden) awards Funus 9/10 for a record that is absolutely superb in execution, performance and production, dripping with emotion and pathos yet not overdoing it, which is both rare and precious and shows a very keen appreciation of both is own music, and his audience as well. Bravo! A mark has been deducted because although there are many Metal elements on the record, there may be only a limited audience for this very eclectic music and I write for a Heavy Metal website…
TRACKLISTING:
01. Gloom And Dusk
02. Would You
03. Soul Faced
04. Embracings Relived
05. Orb Of Inner Voices
06. Never Heard
07. On Unknown Wings
LINE-UP:
Ruben Vermeulen – Fucking everything on the record… (Dark Juan will cease his pitiful ramblings and put himself back in the cupboard immediately for he is clearly untalented and inadequate. Ruben is the superior man here).
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.
