Sursum Luna

This is a bit too "prog" for my tastes in black metal. Upon listening to this, I got the feeling that the band's heart really wasn't in it, but that may be due to my disdain for technically-minded bands. But there is quite a lot of merit on here, so let me clue you in:

There is a really bleak and cold feeling to this album. The guitar parts are mostly higher-end, with almost no deep, crunchy riffs. A lot of the riffs sound like extended parts of solos, with the quite audible bass and drums beefing things up. But, though audible, the backline has a dead, flat sound to it, that approaches what Mayhem was ATTEMPTING to do on "ordo de insult". If you were really keen on that sound, maybe you would like to hear this and find out what they were probably going for. Funeral Oration does NOT sound like that aforementioned Mayhem travesty, but it has similar reference points. One very odd feature of their sound is the seemingly out-of-place snare drum; it is quite prominent in the mix during several songs, and I found it to be distracting. When just re-listening to this album, I found myself getting pretty bored with all the music seemingly focused on "impressing" the listener, until about almost half-way through some passages that were more traditional (in my view) came into play, after which my interest was renewed. Some simple, albeit brief, thrash parts, were thrown in at that point, and the songs became more interesting toward the back-end of the album.

This is a very dense and complicated album. Not that the music is immediately and ANNOYINGLY technical (Arcturus, Spiral Architect, etc.), but there is a motif behind the entire thing that seems as if it may be brilliant in a way I can't quite put my finger on...perhaps involving classical music theory that is far beyond me. There are interludes, or "intermezzos" as they are referred to on the album cover, that are odd harpsichord or piano or even violin pieces; often very quick-paced and macabre. These serve to break the album up into sections, for whatever reason I can't comprehend, though it seems that the band put some thought behind this. Maybe upon repeated listenings the motif can be deciphered.

The vocals, by "The Old Nick", as it says on the album cover, are gasping/rasping along with some variety. Not an appealing vocalist for me, but not dull, either. And being dull is the least appealing of all. The music, as I've tried to stress before, is too "prog" for me, but I didn't get the idea that they were a buncha geeks trying to stroke themselves; it may have had to do with having poor songwriting skills. And I KNOW that a lot of this material will really impress some people, as there is nothing really "wrong" with it. It just isn't my kind've thing. The digipak that I have is quite impressive packaging, folding out into lyrics, artwork, photos, and the like.

In the end, I think perhaps Funeral Oration may be a bit beyond me; if you liked the strangled production and formless "songs" on that Mayhem as mentioned, you may enjoy this with far less "strangled" production and with far less "formless" songs. If nothing else, you can impress all your highbrow fiends with a band that none of them have heard about!