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Black Funeral > Az-i-Dahak > Reviews
Black Funeral - Az-i-Dahak

A ceremony invoking the new era - 90%

mornox, March 10th, 2005

Imagine a ceremony, held in the deepest catacombs; toms beat seductive rythms, flutes play twisting, profane melodies, enshrouded in a miasmic cloud of vile noise from undetermined sources, as the warped sounds of discordant stringed instruments entwine serpentlike in a seductive dance of madness and veneration. While the unwholesome ritual progresses towards its diabolical climax, the rasping, inhuman voice of the master intones the rites of summoning, welcoming the great malefactor into their midst. Long sealed gateways to eldritch realms of horror yawn open, showing vistas of abysses too vast to contemplate by the sane mind. Accompanied by the growing frenzy of cacophonous symphony, the servants of Ahriman slither forth, annointing the lost and fallen with poisonous saliva, sealing forever pacts of bondage to the power which sits enthroned outside of creation, to prepare for the day of the birth of the Unmaker.

After a long time one of America’s oldest and more original musicians has decided to restart his black metal project after an extended foray into ambient/industrial territories. Although Michael Ford’s Black Funeral has always been rather untypical as far as black metal goes, his experience with dark ambient and industrial projects has been applied to his new work along with a thorough erudition in esoteric matters and unwestern musical scales, resulting in this resurrected entity to be a wholly different beast than its previous incarnation.

Although the swirling base,which could be somewhat compared to Sort Vokter with some imagination, has been retained, that’s about all that still sounds familiar. From the very opening notes, one is immediately struck by the perverse and unsettling nature of this album. Using techniques culled from the industrial scene, the guitar-tones are thoroughly warped and twisted, stabbing white noise being shed by every note struck to come to life as a being in itself, phantom tones trailing and suffusing the main melodies like shadows gaining a disturbing autonomy next to the horrors which cast them. The programmed drums are a combination of modern industial harshness and ancient ritualistic rythmicality, creating a clash between the ugliness of modernity and the supernal horror of sinister eons long since past. Where this blasphemous sonic entity really stakes a claim is in its use of eastern-sounding scales, inverted melody-lines, atonal counterpoint structures and an overall order-defying progression into demented realms of uncreation. Commenting on the main guitar ceremony are the pulsating bass-throbs, tune-defying synthetic flutes and other undefined waveforms twisting and snakeing their way through the invocations, further corrupting the progression with their insidious suggestions. And guiding it all is the venomous incantation of Nachttoter, commenting, chanting and intoning the words detailing the legends of Ahriman and his disciple, king Az-i-Dahak of Persia.

This being structured like a ritual ceremony, the progressions relentlessly build up towards ecstatic climaxes, with recurring motifs returning in more inhuman forms throughout each successive track, and with the start of each new musical piece, more untypical elements are added, more alteration of the basic tones is employed and more experimentation is commenced with the rythm section; it eventually culminates in Astovihad, were a massive, gargantuan rythm guitar unexpectedly makes its horrid introduction, representing whatever vile entity stepped forth from the summoning circle, to dominate and subdue all other instrumentation in its inevitable rise to power. Then follows a desolate dark ambient piece showing what is left in the aftermath, shallowing up all sound in nebulous nether regions of drones, as the dominion of man is shallowed up inescapably by whatever lurks beyond the threshold of our mortal realm.

This is not your grandaddy’s black metal.
It in fact destroys most preconceptions surrounding the proper way to make black metal. I wish anyone good luck trying to find many reference points to scandinavian methods of melody writing. This is an evolution of black metal into musical regions normally occupied by the most inventive industrial and dark ambient artists, even more so than Blut aus Nord, which remains stuck with a definite Thorns influence. Black Funeral has with this album shed its former influence like a second skin, emerging as a more mature and intelligent serpent.

Get this and revel in the new era of Typhon-Set, untying the spiritual knots binding ones spirit to sanity and reason, becoming one with dissolution and uncreation.

Exalted