• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5

The Funeral Pyre offer here some basic, raw Black Metal reminiscent of the mid to late 90s Scandinavian school, with a bit of a Doom vibe thrown in. While this is pretty raw stuff, the production is actually quite decent – in other words, this is not "bathroom Black Metal". The pace varies from very slow, quite of doom-ish, to mid to fast-paced. The slowest parts are gloomy as hell, sometimes a bit depressive even. No matter the speed though, the atmosphere conveyed throughout the album is pretty damn dark and sometimes even a bit "scary" (for lack of a better word) – some of this would fit well for the soundtrack of some horror suspense filmed in a remote, dark forest.

The vocals follow the music – harsh rasps that are agonizing, full of anguish and sometimes quite aggressive. There's no show off crap to be found here, just basic guitar and drum work with no frills, but the guys in The Funeral Pyre sure know how to use them effectively. I wasn't expecting much going in, but Vultures at Dawn turned out to be one disturbing slab of Black Metal. And when it comes to Black Metal, "disturbing" is good.