Funeral Mist are a Swedish band that came after the heyday of the second wave Norwegian bands. They were desperate to find a gimmick to stand toe to toe with their idols, but actual acts of hatred and violence proved too much for them. The band resorted instead to samples and pseudo-biblical lyrics, only to see themselves remain as irrelevant as they were before they even started. Along with bands like Deathspell Omega, Watain and Abigor, Funeral Mist are at least partially responsible for the corruption and decay of musical quality in black metal.

The production on this record is the same sterile sound that has become the industry standard for more than 10 years now. It is embarrassing for a black metal bands to rely on triggered double bass drums. We hear a few hundred guitar tracks that have been recorded riff by riff, and poor vocals that stem from poor technique and probably also poor lifestyle choices. The black metal shriek requires some athleticism to produce correctly and emotion in execution otherwise you end up with the classic frog talking vocals of Dimmu Borgir.

Emperor-eque melodies clash against a back drop of simple minded blast beats in riff salad arrangements. The melodies function in typical rock manner and appear sporadically and never vary. We are treated to brain dead chromatic riffs as the drums and guitars make way for the vocals. As the vocals modulate from weak modern shrieks and half-growled shouts, the riffs do not progress and form a static wall of sound similar to Marduk’s later period which is essentially war metal but with modern pristine production.

Funeral mist also rely heavily on simple guitar tricks to create motifs devoid of melody as popularized by Korn and the like. Random slides and tremolo dives form the majority of these tricks and, rather than supplementing existing melodies, they usurp them completely. Instead of attempting to communicate chaos and hatred through melodies and carefully tailored song constructions, Hekatomb insists on bombarding the listener with an excess of meaningless information that conveys a festive circus and lacks any form of authenticity and grit.

At times, the album manages to show enough discipline to play derivative musical ideas, including a laughable attempt at adding synths in the style of Burzum. In electronics one often has to rely on combinational logic to simplify complicated circuits. Combinational logic consists of taking the entirety of the information and simplifying it down to a simple formula, in the same manner let us apply this concept to Funeral Mist.

On the surface there seems to be a lot going on but after analysis we can safely conclude that Hekatomb is the product of metalcore production, war metal straightforward blasting, random structure and nu metal embellishments. There is no reason to discuss nor listen to this album and one should avoid this like the plague.

Tags: 2018, funeral mist, hekatomb, noevdia