Formed in 2003, The Funeral Pyre first garnered attention in the underground with their second album The Nature of Betrayal in 2006. The band had quite a unique sound with one guitar going head to head with keyboards and the music was a blackened death metal attack that was quite original.

Wounds opens superbly with the one two punch of Thieves and Black Earth both of which sound a bit like World Funeral era Marduk. The songs are quite aggressive and there’s a fair degree of venom in the delivery. The guitars provide some melody and while things are fast and brutal it’s also catchy enough to make an impression. The song writing is inventive and displays a wide range of influences from within the extreme metal field. When the band does slow down like on melodic The Gathering Bones they sound great and the addition of the odd melodic guitar line works really well on this song. Another stand-out track is the 8 minute plus title track which is all about mood and atmosphere. It has a slow burning start before pulling off some solid blackened doom.

It is after this song that Wounds starts to slip as an album. The second half of the album just fails to captivate and I found my attention drifting. The songs seem like a re-hash of what’s already come on the album and the power of the title song or album opener Thieves is missing. Wounds as an album also suffers from a very weak drum sound. These songs really need a thundering drum sound to enhance the aggression but what’s on here just sounds weak and flat. It’s a similar problem with the overall production of the album where everything sounds a bit flat and the songs would have been helped immeasurably by a punchier heavier production.

At the end of the day, The Funeral Pyre is a good band and Wounds has some great songs. In fact the first four songs on the album are terrific but the band is unable to keep the momentum going for the length of the entire album. If this album was just 4 songs and 25 minutes long I’d be talking of it as one of the top releases of the year but in its current form Wounds is just too bloated and repetitive.



Label - Prosthetic
Year of Release - 2008