If I had a dollar for every time I blindly picked some doom-tinged death metal from the Promo Wheel of Suffering and walked away with almost straight Incantation worship, I’d have…(math sounds)…OK, I’d only have enough for a donut and coffee from the Speedway up the street, but that’s a lot when you rarely review death metal. With the arrival of The Illusion of Time1 by New York’s Funeral Leech, I now have enough to play a scratch-off ticket while I drink my coffee. I’m not complaining. Incantation are my personal favorite OSDM outfit, and it’s probably no coincidence that I can detect whiffs of their brackish death metal rising from promos I know nothing else about. The question now is whether or not Funeral Leech’s grimy death doom is any good. And since time is an illusion, you should have plenty of it to spend parsing out this question with me.
The Illusion of Time, the band’s sophomore album, nails the pungent atmosphere one would expect of cavern-core. The production approaches Onward to Golgotha levels of grime, yet somehow maintains a shockingly high DR. The tremolo death riffs roil and slide, and drummer/vocalist Lucas Anderson’s dry bellows hew far closer to Craig Pillard than John McEntee. So, are Incatationanigans all these guys have up their sleeves? Not quite. Things tend slower and doomier in general. The band themselves cite another Jersey group, Evoken, as an influence. I can hear it, especially on closer “The Tower,” though Funeral Leech don’t sustain these funeral doom levels of crawl throughout. They do add some lugubrious touches of storm sounds, tolling bells and synths here and there without overusing them, which is appreciated. At their fastest, which is just the upper range of mid-paced, Funeral Leech slot in nicely next to death metal contemporaries Fossilization.
I’ll get my main criticism out of the way before I tell you why The Illusion of Time is a good record. When it comes to being safe and comfy in a well-worn sound, Funeral Leech are a bathrobe and slippers. They might have a pentagram embroidered on them, but they’re still fuzzy and soft and absorbent. Fashionable this is not, but I’m happy to wrap myself in the scuzzy riffs of songs like “Ceaseless Wheel of Becoming” and “Penance” when I want to let my mind idle. The promo materials seemed to think this was more of a melting pot of sounds than it actually is, citing several funeral and traditional doom bands that I just don’t hear.2 What I do hear is a VERY New Jersey-centric, American death doom sound, which is far from a bad thing.3
The ideal experience with cavern-core leaves a listener needing to de-grime afterwards with Gojo or Lava or some other brand of pumice soap usually reserved for car mechanics or farmers. Funeral Leech are just such a band, and you’ll have to exfoliate until you draw blood to ever really feel clean again after spinning The Illusion of Time. The atmosphere is unrelentingly thick and miasmic, with crunchy down-tuned tremolo riffs, knuckle-dragging marches and mournful guitar moans. These riffs are consistently solid and occasionally memorable, with the best examples occurring in the first half of opener “…And the Sky Wept” and throughout “Penance,” which was, incidentally, the song that made me remark to my colleagues “Well THAT was a straight up Incantation song.” Perhaps the best part of the band’s sound is Anderson’s enviable low rumbling death roar, which again, is like Craig Pillard but without all the shitheadedness.4 From a songwriting standpoint, most of the five tracks follow a pattern of mid-paced first half and slowed down back half, with some returning to the mid-paced pummeling near the end. It can be a bit repetitive, and the songs sometimes bog down somewhere in the middle of the slow parts, but they ultimately play their style well.
There’s no shortage of relatively new death metal bands looking to early-nineties Jersey for inspiration, but Funeral Leech pull off the pastiche without sounding too tired thanks to solid riff craft and a suffocating atmosphere. If you’re looking for something fresh and exhilarating, look elsewhere, but if you’re after a grimy good time, have yourself a good wallow in The Illusion of Time.
Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 10 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Carbonized Records
Websites: funeralleech.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/funeralleech
Releases Worldwide: April 5th, 2024
