Feeding Frenzy: Marche Funèbre – After The Storm

Feeding Frenzy: Marche Funèbre – After The Storm

Marche Funèbre – After The Storm

Release Date: 27th September 2024||Genre: Death-doom||Label: Ardua Music

Marche Funèbre drop a tombstone of haunting doom with their fifth album, After The Storm

Yes, I’ve certainly seen the name about. Yet despite a fifteen year existence, I had no idea what was lurking in the shadows of Belgium, until this mournful monolith landed on the Slow Dragon desk. Simplistically morbid, After The Storm is some of the most effectively dark music I’ve heard for a while. Bereft gutturals mix it up with melodic vocal dirges, and just enough licks to truly differentiate the band’s character, as they surf a macabre tidal wave.

I’m a little ashamed it’s taken me this long. Marche Funèbre are easily shoulder to shoulder with the grim English likes of Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride, who first brought this canon of tumbling, titanic sadness to the fore. At the same time as nods to black metal, though, they also subtly dip a toe in the waters of shoegazey pop… Yeah, you read that. If you sink into some of the vocals and more swirly guitar moments, you’ll see I’m right.

It’s no surprise to see their label, Ardua Music, lists albums from My Silent Wake and On Thorns I Lay amongst its releases, seemingly a fitting home for this band. Their crushingly beautiful works are very much aided into life by the production efforts of Martin Furia (Destruction, Nervosa, Toxik). If you you dive right in, you might pick up on the organic creaks and groans of instruments allowed their breathing space. A very nice touch, which is maybe born of the producer’s experience with thrash.

A thrash record this ain’t, though. Devotees of goth-tainted death-doom, you’ve been looking for this album. Even if you didn’t know it; an absolutely heart-wrenching tour de force , and a compulsory addition to your listening library.