I have a soft, rotten depression in my heart where I keep my love of death-doom. And in a year where we were fortunate enough to get a Paradise Lost LP it feels even more imperative to shout-out bands who are keeping it old school, tending to the flame of early Asphyx recordings to guide the passage of twisted souls through the twilight hours. New York’s Funeral Leech is one such band, and their debut album
Death Meditation consists of six surprisingly spry bursts of downtuned, morbid, and fatalistic death metal wrapped in the deathly shroud of doom. The album kicks off with the Mortuous-esque grave echo of “Downpour,” and continues into the maddening abyss of “The Burden of Flesh,” things slow down a bit with the murky trudge of “Lament,” only to be picked back up again by the forceful blast-beats and brutal riffs of the Morbid Angel meets OS Paradise Lost deluge “Morbid Transcendence.” Their drummer and vocalist Lucas Anderson explained to the good folks at Decibel Mag a few months back that the goal of the album is to turn a penetrating gaze upon the tissue-thin justifications that stoke humanity’s will to live, and the existentially absurd and futile struggle to beat back the claws of death and prevent oneself from being dragged into the maw of oblivion. When it comes to death-doom, you really can’t get much more on-brand than that. Namast-not-today, buddy.
Get a copy of Death Meditation from Carbonized Records,
here.
