Album Type: Full Length
Date Released: 1/12/2014
Label: Eerie Echoes / Throne Records
‘The Light’ DD/LP track listing:
1. Oath (04:32)
2. Vakna (05:48)
3. Aryd (05:11)
4. Shine (05:27)
5. Tiga (03:33)
6. Closer (05:07)
7. The Light (Part I) (03:36)
8. The Light (Part II) (05:55)
2. Vakna (05:48)
3. Aryd (05:11)
4. Shine (05:27)
5. Tiga (03:33)
6. Closer (05:07)
7. The Light (Part I) (03:36)
8. The Light (Part II) (05:55)
Bio:
Fvnerals is a band from Brighton . Syd (guitar) and Antoine (drums) met Tiffany (vocals/synth) in the south coast town of Brighton
Review:
It's been a long wait since this trio's early 2013 EP ‘The Hours’, but immensely worth it as their debut full length is a sparse and elegant jewel that has already earned many repeat plays. A fully-realised sound, well-mixed, well recorded. Awash in Earthish-tones and haunting drones, it envelopes you with emptiness. Clean, often subdued, but seething under it's sleek hood; it has an eerie menace to it that evokes the slowest of shoegazers getting ritually knifed in a basement by Chelsea Wolfe and Bohren und der Club of Gore.
After an unearthly intro, briefly narrated by ethereal-to-unintelligibility vocals, the second track ‘Vakna’ is a mesmerizing standout on the album. A persistent drone builds in intensity, meshing beautifully with vocalist Tiffany's echo-heavy wailing and forlorn melody. Smoky, sultry singing juxtaposed with shattered laments, carry so much of this album, but ‘Aryd’ comes of as positively noir in a sensual femme-fatale turn, on top of a nodding groove and an almost sleazy motif. "It drags you down, to where it finds you"…I keep wanting to compare this to a King Dude, Crippled Black Phoenix, or even Nick Cave at times despite not having a lot of technical or musical similarities. They share something else, that vibe of resolute negativity, restless darkness. Something ephemeral in the gloom connects them. Musically they resemble nothing so much as the aforementioned Earth and Chelsea Wolfe, at times channelling the darkest moments of Have a Nice Life, or a freshly showered Giles Corey.
Skipping ahead, the fifth tune on this disc, ‘Tiga’, teases a release that never comes. The pulsing undertones of heaviness from the climactic moments, which are scattered throughout the album never show themselves, and it maintains its tense peace until the end. Following that with a more accessible gloom-rock piece titled ‘Closer’, the band shows a little more range than on the rest of the album; more musicality, less drone. Yet more melody and the interesting choice of a distinctly -metal- drumming style, complete with double bass, under these harmoniously bleak auspices leading up to a crashing end. ‘Closer’ fades out to a hum that begins ‘The Light Pt 1’.: an instrumental drone track serving as introduction to ‘Pt 2’. The haunting becomes more aggressive on this final dirge; a seance gone awry, a spook that's searching for you. Aptly placed at the end, maybe because it finds you?
A spectral vigil for the death of shoegaze, a cadaverous take on the cabaret, this album is dark and droning enough to satisfy doomsters while maintaining a sound on the far end of an austere gothic restraint, and the members' other bands aren't bad at all either. If this band tickles your fancy be sure and check out (www.myyths.com), (www.simianhunters.bandcamp.com), and (www.chromes.bandcamp.com). ‘The Light’ is coming out in a few weeks on Throne Records (http://www.thronerecs.com) and a couple tracks are posted on their bandcamp (www.fvnerals.bandcamp.com). For now you can listen to ‘The Hours’ for free there, while you are waiting for ‘The Light’, as anxious as I am.
Words by: James Harris
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