From Funeral Skies

I’m not going to sit here and talk about how Funeral Skies compares to other of Stijn’s projects, in fact The Ethereal, along with Beyond Black Void is the only project of his I've listened to. I had no intention of listening to his work, I really didn't, I only checked out this release based on several reviews that made it sound potentially interesting. I’m always on the lookout for atmospheric and/or depressive music and The Ethereal seemed to tick all the right boxes for what I look for.

Funeral Skies is essentially a series of drawn out drones that last for a very long time until the music transitions into the next drone and the cycle starts all over again. Funeral Skies strips funeral doom down to its barest essentials, highly repetitious, minimalistic and droning, there’s effectively not much to critique about Funeral Skies because there’s basically not a lot going on. The guitars play a series of endless strung out notes whilst a lead plays slow melodies to harmonize the powerful backdrop of never ending waves of bass and guitar.

Minimalism should never be the sole element behind music, with genres such as funeral doom where minimalistic song writing and heavy use of repetition are paramount to the genre; aspects such as good song writing become highly important, if not essential. Therefore it seems strange that I enjoy Funeral Skies as much as I do, admittedly there’s not much of anything going on here, but I’d be lying if I said this wasn't some effective and powerful stuff. The atmosphere created conjures up visages of a vast, endless desert of rolling grey sands; entirely devoid of life. It might not sound like the most interesting atmosphere, heck it probably doesn't even sound like a good atmosphere to most readers out there, but the way Stijn handles it is remarkable. The music here makes no attempt to sound lively, it meanders about at the same grueling tempo with no direction in site, like walking in the desert, Funeral Skies has got no other purpose except to move forward unto an unseen horizon.

Despite the directionless nature of the music on display here, it surprisingly sounds well thought out and constructed. As though each transition was planned out before hand, each organ note, each wave of guitar was carefully planned out and designed with surgical precision. The music is very structured, with each note transitioning into each other seamlessly. Overall, I’d say Funeral Skies comes together to form one very long piece of music, as much of the songs are interchangeable I’m surprised the tracks weren't blended together. After all, this strikes me as an album that needs to be listened to in its entirety to get the full effect, to do so would destroy the purpose of this music.

Admittedly this was one of the hardest reviews I've ever written, the sheer starkness of the music is significantly difficult to critique as it’s hard to find anything to say about it that doesn't make it sound boring. The actual music of this record seems to have come second to the powerful atmosphere that this album so perfectly captures; this really is an album to be listened to for the atmosphere alone. This isn't music for those looking for something fun and catchy to listen to; this is music to become lost within. The endless waves of guitars mixed with sparse keyboard melodies and the occasional low whispered growl serve to create one of the most powerful and poetic atmospheres that have graced my ears. Funeral Skies is funeral doom taken to its logical extreme, the be all, end all of the genre. And whilst I have to be in the right frame of mind to listen to this album as the endless droning is hard to stomach on the best of occasions, I find when my mind longs for something stark and desolate, nothing hits the mark better than this album. With only a few organ notes, a handful of chords and a steady drum beat, Stijn has created one of the most effective albums of all time.

The Ethereal is a project of the prolific multi-instrumentalist Stijn Van Cauter (he of such bands as Fall of the Grey-Winged One, Until Death Overtakes Me and Beyond Black Void amongst many, many others). Founded back in 2002, it was brought into existence to mirror his Until Death Overtakes Me project, albeit with a harsher, colder, more minimalistic edge (if you’ve heard the slow, droning ambient decrepitude of Until Death Overtakes Me before however, you might find that hard to believe!).

Originally released back in 2002 on Totentroll (a sub-label of the now defunct UK label Rage of Achilles), this is the re-release of the album, which has been re-recorded and an extra 4th track added on Marche Funebre Productions. As you might expect by Stijn’s other projects, this is as droning, dirge-like and downright depressing as music gets. Entire worlds form and die in the time between each over-distorted chord struck, allowing the trebly, fizzing guitars to bleed slowly to into oblivion along with the cavernous bass notes tearing holes in the space-time continuum behind them, the occasional cymbal hit and drum crashes merely acting as exclamation points for the devastating funereal amplifier abuse. Vocally, Stijn gurgles his guttural moans in an almost whispered manner, adding an intense yet serene veil of sorrow over the crushing oceans of music which they float over, plunging the depths of absolute destitution in his lyrics.

To be honest, there isn’t a huge amount of difference between this and Until Death Overtakes Me, apart from a lesser usage of synthesisers for a more hard-hitting vibe.
Similarly to music from bands such as Sunn 0))), The Ethereal relies solely on listener patience for its treasures to be revealed in their entirety (this isn’t music for A.D.H.D suffers in the slightest, as each of the four tracks on the album range between 10 and 17 minutes). Multiple replays on headphones at night are my personal recommendation for these types of releases to give their greatest of rewards. The Ethereal undoubtedly do reward however, with a claustrophobic and intensive album that stares deeply into the void.

Originally written for http://www.metalteamuk.net

Okay, I'll be the first to admit that not a whole hell of a lot goes on in 'From Funeral Skies'. This shit is really sparse and repetitive even for a funeral doom album, and there's no way to deny it: there's very little in the way of actual content and what little there is gets repeated to death over the course of four (or, if you have the older version, three) songs. No, this project isn't very necessary (but neither are the rest of Stjin's hundred projects), but for some reason, I can't really fault it because, damn, I actually enjoy it.

Stjin clearly wants you to know that this is a Funeral Fucking Doom album. When you hear the phrase 'funeral doom', this is the music that you hear in your mind. Incredibly slow tempos, ultra-low, whispery growls, plunging, subterranean bass, thin, incredibly sharp and equally slow lead guitar stitching out tiny fragments of melody amid the crushing desolation. And this is sure as hell some desolate music: the space between notes is even further than the average funeral doom, stretched out into unbelievably long stretches of pure nothingness.

This is funeral doom taken to a ridiculous extreme. There almost seems to be a perception in the doom metal scene that funeral doom is sort of the endpoint of the genre: that all the other stylistic divergences are a way of preparing you for funeral doom, the be-all, end-all of artistic development for doom metal. Well, if we take that to be true, The Ethereal is easily the absolutely monolithic end point of the end point, the final, impossibly vast canyon that greets those who have raced across the desert of funeral doom. And when you arrive at the end, you almost say to yourself, "Is this it? Is that all there is?"

But the point of 'From Funeral Skies' really is, yes, that is all there is. The cover art describes the music perfectly: the band's name on a backdrop of purple, white, grey, and black sky. Utterly sparse and desolate in every way, minimalist, devoid of any and all unnecessary elements. What Stjin has done with The Ethereal is to break funeral doom into its barest components, and take handfuls of chords and notes and words and line them up for presentation. Imagine, at the end of that desert of funeral doom, with its dark grey sands and endless, stormy skies, you finally reach the canyon that is The Ethereal. Incomprehensibly vast, low rumblings echoing out slowly and eternally, and beyond that canyon? More flat grey desert stretching on forevermore, and an endless ridge of dark grey mountains to your left trapping you here, unless you attempt to walk to the right, with no end to the sand in sight. Whether this image strikes a chord in you is the litmus test as to whether you will enjoy 'From Funeral Skies' or not.

Personally? I find it entrancing. That image that I described stands out impossibly clearly in my mind when I listen to this album. Yes, 'From Funeral Skies' is essentially nothingness. But it is a pure representation of nothingness, using these bare, monolithic elements to draw attention to this vast loneliness and emptiness. It's music composed only of thunderclaps and endlessly held notes, repeated ad infinitum, allowing you to explore every detail of this vast, desolate soundscape. I find music like this incredibly gripping, despite how objectively thin what's going on is. Obviously, many will find this boring, meaningless, and trite, but for those of us who find the finality of funeral doom to be one of the ultimate expressions of art and finality, you can find little better an album than this.

Emptiness. A cold, quiet, vast, unending, lonely, wandering, grey, desolate void. Make of that what you will.

(Originally written for www.vampire-magazine.com)

FADE IN:

EXT. GREY DESERT AREA - DAY

We open on a shot of a vast desert of ashes. There are great dunes of grey sand. The skies are a roiling grey, clouds blocking out the sun so that time is indeterminate. The wind howls ceaselessly, scattering the dust and ash about and battering at the ugly slate mountains in the distance.

(Evocative isn't it? Its the atmosphere that The Ethereal manage to create within seconds of the behemoth opener "Beyond All Dreams", and it would be the perfect setting for any number of musical directions they might try. A vicious black metal assault might be forthcoming, finger-crooked cawing menace at the stick urging the panzer divisions ever onward, powered by a boiler room stocked by mad guitar alchemy. There might follow a crushing doom opus like "Black Sabbath" or "A Sorcerer's Pledge", those earthshaking guitars coagulating into devastating riffs and thick, hearty bass. I mean, anything could come out of those mordant opening bars, literally dripping feedback on the crushed skulls of long-dead desert warriors.

Except that nothing does. From Funeral Skies is the equivalent of a forty minute film where nothing happens. Nothing. I'm not kidding, there's really nothing here. You might think that it wouldn't be possible to literally not have anything occur in a fifteen minute song, but you'd be wrong. There's a thin line between ambient and non-existent sometimes, and The Ethereal stay well clear of the line. They don't even pretend to be making songs.

This isn't doom kiddies, this is noise. Yes, the guitars are 'heavy'. They just don't 'move'. The guy isn't 'playing' the instrument you see. This is like a bowling ball being tossed into a tar pit... it just sinks. True, there are other instruments here. There are some murky subterranean drums, but amazingly an instrument designed to keep a beat fails to move the songs. If you think of a song as a progressive thing, each chord or beat moving towards the conclusion of the song and building upon the last part, The Ethereal's output does not qualify as song. It is literally just a guy taking a REALLY long time between pointless downbeats.

The vocals? Ha. There aren't any to speak of. Yes, some guy occasionally stumbles over to the microphone to record a monotonous yawn/growl that is amazingly in the exact same register as the guitars, but it may as well just be another instrument. In fact, it sounds so much like the guitar that I almost wonder if it wouldn't have been a more interesting experiment to record all of the guitar parts performed vocally with some keyboard accompaniment. I mean, it would still suck, but at least I could laugh at it.

Furthermore, never ever start every song exactly the same way. It’s as if he's rolling a bolder down a very sticky cliff and the only time we see the boulder move is right as it begins falling. Otherwise, we're stuck in crazy slow time, faces stuck in a sort of bored but morbidly curious expression.

The three tracks here are essentially the same song at different lengths, but at the very least "Wish" is a little shorter and includes some atonal wailing that breaks up the general murk. But really, when irritating atonal wailing can be considered a highlight.... consider yourself fucked. The only good thing about this 'band' is their name.)

Leave camera rolling for 41 minutes and 46 seconds.

FADE OUT