Funeral Flowers

It has now become synonymous with every musical venture concerning the multi-instrumentalist Jason Roberts that a seriously heavy and emotionally driven topic will be tackled. Under his personal project Breaths and collaborating with atmospheric black metal solo artist Daygraves, as well as with one-man post-black metal project Wounds Of Recollection, the trio concocted a 6-song split titled “Funeral Flowers”, setting to face the themes of death, mortality, and all life components that draw an affinity to this funerary stage, as each band presented a pair of interconnected tracks. The interpretation will be done chronologically with the tracklist, as the songs’ order based on my perspective, carry the essence of implicit storytelling Funeral Flowers attempts to express. Moreover, the simplicity of the cover artwork picturing the album’s title propagates an honest tale full of thoughts and expressions.

Breaths opens up the split with the two-part song "An Artist's Rendering". Delivering a homage to lo-fi production akin to a mixture of black metal's 2nd wave, depressive suicidal black metal, the latter influencing the sonic composition as well, and even with a touch of lo-fi hip-hop beats notably via the sound of the drumming, the opening track displays a tranquilizing performance that drags on for quite a while, occasionally giving the right feels for background music. This feature unfortunately passes on a redundant nature to the music as it drudges too long trying to create an overly done atmosphere, especially the second part, as the 10-minute track could have benefitted from a bit of trimming while still maintaining that empyreal ambience Breaths is known to control with Jason's delicately soothing clean vocals along with his haunting distant screams. Nevertheless, this observation could be more based over the fact that a comparative analysts is being done from my behalf; I've grown accustomed to hearing amazing content from Jason that a slight detour in the quality feels like a massive marginal downgrade. Yet this secondary part proved to be heavier, with power chords riffing leaving a djenty aftertaste. On the brighter side of the spectrum, Breaths' two compatriots shone formidably.

My starting experience with Daygraves' opening track titled Native Tongue was in some way breathtaking. Perhaps it was the foggy weather that surrounded me that helped intensify the feelings, but Native Tongue represents the epitome of blackgaze, as it shot at my face rays of nostalgia, reminding me exactly why I fell in love with form of cathartic music in the first place. The song peacefully commences with a simplistic post-rock oriented intro, sharing a similar approach to the recently blowing band GOLD. From jaded clean vocals to screams of desolate pain, combined with blissful moments of double bass and blast beating drums, and loud distorted guitars that surge with atmospheric magnificence. The production is a key standpoint once again, as it glues the musical arrangements together thoroughly. Sorrowful and somber manners are more utilized in the second track titled Nowhere, with a gravitation towards further attention to details behind every instrumental piece, as grinding riffs and full force shrieks emerge at the forefront.

Similar to Breaths, Wounds Of Recollection offers a two-part song holding the name Heirloom, where the two tracks communicate with each other telepathically through subtle theme recurrences. Part one is introduced with a piano playing, as the tracks slowly and carefully transcends into slow riffing accentuated by the heavy hitting drumming. Throughout the sonic composition that contains blackened and funeral death/doom tendencies, it appears clear that Wounds Of Recollection were paying tribute to their past era. Whereas the second part of Heirloom, also positioned as the closing track of the split, not only does it brim with fresh details with every listen with its cycles of melodies that entwine between the sense of dread and the fainting echo of uplift, for in addition it that, the album closer exudes the dramatic implantation of a climax, exhibiting the ending of this 45-minute journey through its conclusive destination. Yet it signifies more than just a simple ending; it opens a portal to replenished possibilities, mirroring the mechanism of how life works. It is the fatal finale that ushers the path to a new beginning in the days of each individual's life; as life and death join hands together, one bids us farewell while the other arises welcoming us with warmth, and it's the cooperation of these two powerful forces that sculpt the beauty of our world.

When constantly trying to analyze this kind of post-oriented music, I usually find myself straying away from scholarly describing the melding compartments that sonically led to this offering. Instead, I opt to absorb the full picture behind the music, and to digest the entire scenery portrayed behind the message aimed to be released to the listeners. The display of musical intensity, virtuosic performance and established theatrics is all vividly present, yet it's the conceptual road that carved this collaboration into a fine piece of art. Whether it was intentional or not, the order of the songs made total sense. Each band projected a different perspective about the matters of life and death. Breaths presented a monotonous and toiled life, symbolizing the habits, chores, duties and hustles each of us come across. Daygraves tackled the occasional events that impact and shape our lives, a thin line between struggling and solving a mess, and almost surrendering along the way was represented. And then Wounds Of Recollection closed the curtain with an aggressive solution or end to battle this problematic mess, with the emergence of an aftermath, filled with moments of realization and self-observation. This review may be more artistic and poetic than theoretically and musically scrupulous, yet this is perhaps the vision the musicians wanted each of us to feel and imagine. To sum up the efforts of the three bands behind this project; Funeral Flowers is a breath of relief for the grave days that continuously collect wounds of the rollercoaster we unanimously call life.

FFO: Deafheaven, Lantlôs, Alcest
Originally written by Charbel Salameh for HeadbangersHaven.com