Past Depression

If you're into instrumental black/ambient music you'll love this album for sure - and I state this from the beginning of my review just to make things clear, mainly because at first glance one can mistake this disk as the usual "I suffer from depression/I want to die/my life is shit" stuff. Nothing like this, at least from my point of view, for one main reason: the only member/songwriter/musician Belzebub, from Jaworzno (Southern Poland), ambitiously tried and managed successfully to create unique atmospheres starting from a song title and developing it into purely instrumental works, where the usual (for the subgenre) drum machine doesn't take over, but rather fits perfectly in melodies created with electric and acoustic guitars only.

Belzebub - let me repeat, ambitiously - leaved the usual clichés we're accustomed to when speaking of all those subgenres of black metal one can describe as "ambient/black", "suicidal/depressive" and so on: he decided not to write anything except for song titles like Melancholy (echos from the past) and I am nothing, thus bringing those few words into great ambient songs where both distorted and acoustic guitars lead pretty much everything. Being an instrumental album, one can expect solos or virtuosities and, of course, there's nothing like this here: the only thing that the listener has to do is to read the title of the song he's about to hear and to prepare himself to be dragged into that particular environment.

Yeah, I'm not trying to celebrate this album as an absolute masterpiece: of course, it's not an innovative idea to write instrumental/ambient songs about depression and suffering or any kind of inner/personal struggle: groups like Abyssic Hate and Forgotten Tomb (listen to Springtime depression, for instance, pretty similar to Funeral Depression's Another sad day) have already tried pretty successfully this theme, and - of course - even the song titles aren't that original, but - as you will read below - this is another Funeral Depression strength, mainly because it's rather hard to produce feelings with guitars only and starting from a simple and - I admit - often abused title that you can find in hundred of suicidal/depressive albums.

Entering the album itself, the first four songs are taken directly from the first demo of Funeral Depression, "Voices from the sad soul" (2008), and they're easily the best songs of the whole album (which is fully enjoyable, though): only electric and acoustic guitars, a bass guitar and a drum machine (with occasional piano parts, like in the great Suffering of my heart and soul) are able to create an environment of melancholy and despair, just as the song titles introduce. Everything, as you can imagine, is pretty repetitive, and even if the songs aren't that long compared to many other tracks in the suicidal/depressive subgenre, they are based on repeating some riffs that alternate from electric to acoustic passages, and even if this style isn't innovative at all Funeral Depression succeded to transport it into a peculiar and unique environment that I can't stop loving.

In the end, this album is heavily suggested to everyone that likes instrumental and slow music, recreating astonishing melodies and feelings along the whole songs; even those who are into suicidal/depressive stuff may like or love this album, but they have to be prepared not to hear any kind of voice/growl/scream at all - Funeral Depression chose to evocate their feelings by using only guitar melodies, and they succeeded in their goal reall, really well. Let's wait for the successor of this masterpiece!

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