Universal Funeral March

Ceremonial Casting's 2003 effort, Universal Funeral March, has proven to be one of the stranger black metal release. The production is at the tip of the high end ready to create some great headaches. The actual music is taken away, which is actually pretty decent symphonic black metal. The orchestration gave more atmosphere to the black metal, but being produced with no bass whatsoever. It's like the ...And Justice For All of Black Metal. Too much treble and can create headaches.

Enough about the production. The vocals are absolutely out of place. They overlap the music half of the time, and they're death metal vocals with the occasional black metal snarls. This gets annoying fast. I'm not a huge fan of black and death metal but they seem to confuse the two. Death metal vocals can be very well heard during what sounds like a decent black metal riff, and vice versa.

Despite the vocals and production musically this album is quite a good release. A very orchestrated form of black metal, with moments that are reminding of Dimmu Borgir or Graveworm symphonically. With orchestration that only helps develop the atmosphere made by this release. The riffs are much more than constant tremolo picking which really helps develop the sound and make the album memorable. Also in the musical aspects of this release are a few death metal riffs, while it's few and far between to make out, these small sections make the death metal vocals a bit more tolerable.

Overall this album is good despite the bad treble production giving off headaches and out of place death metal vocals. I recommend a listen or two but it's nothing very brilliant. The form it was presented in took away from that slight chance of being quite a quality release, though you can tell this band definately is heading in a proper direction with their sound.