The voyage into oblivion continues, inexroably shrouded in a mist of torment. Funerary‘s journey into their own personal wasteland of aural misery continues, dragging everything with them. Today the Arizona doom devastators present us with their newest craft, sewn up in a heathen symbiosis with the fat, slimy and suffocating tentacles of Italy’s equally monolithic riff-monsters, Ooze. This unholy, godless, heathen and bastard pairing of sludge-doom heavyweights comes to you through the omniscient and once again foreseeing eyes of the always great Midnite Collective, and we are extremely stoked today to tell you how fucking harrowing and skull-crushing this split is.
Things kick off with Funerary doing what they do best: unfolding two forbidding, colossal and malefic slabs of misery-drowned doom. Two aural discharges of collapsing sonic torment that mean absolute fucking pain. Laying somewhere in-between the realms of Yob, Corrupted, Conan and Indian, Funerary have taken the notions of “heavy,” “suffocating,” “loud” and “crushing” to insanity-level extremes and have just fucking run with them, creating something that is so heavy, and inhuman and alienating that as you listen to the two tracks, you can barely keep your eardrums from fucking bursting, and your skull from caving in. Listening to Funerary’s music is a harrowing experience. It almost feel like a container ship has been placed on your chest and you can feel the music slowly squeeze the air out of your tiny and helpless ribcage under the sheer tonnage and force of their unforgiving and titanic riffs. If you liked their debut album Starless Aeon, you will absolutely adore these two skull-crushing tracks.
The second half of this monstrous split is all in the hands of Italy’s Ooze, who by the way you should catch on tour with Funerary and Lycus this summer. Owing some similarities to their close cousins and compatriots Ufomammut and Grime, Ooze are more oriented to a groovy and menacing form of stoner/doom. Their high-octave and adrenaline-charged sludge is “faster” and more energetic that Funerary’s, but loses absolutely nothing in sheer tonnage and heaviness if compared to their split companions. To the opposite, their riffs are an utter war zone of heaviness and crushing sonic obliteration. The short songs and locked tempos ensure for an absolutely bulldozing listening experience, with the band constantly with their plow down and foot on the pedal, ripping through a firestorm of riffs and percussion and obliterating everything in their path. Their music almost has a “hardcore” feel to it, which reminds us of classic sludge core masters like Eyehategod, Buzzoven, Grief and Bongzilla.
Overall, this split is a real challenge to your bone density and to the resistance of your skull and ear-drums. Being obliterated and pummeled into dust has never been more fun and captivating as it is to listen to this monstrous and oversized split. The 12″ LP drops on August 11, pre-order it here!
