MISCELLANY NO. 41: FUNERAL WHORE, FALLING LEAVES, AND PARIUS

Your humble editor has been under the weather since last weekend, causing him to fall even further behind in planned NCS projects (and also causing him occasionally to refer to himself in the third person). Concentrating for very long has proven difficult, and given that your editor’s normal attention span is comparable to that of a hummingbird, this is a serious deficit. I haven’t been able to listen to more than a song or two at a stretch, and even typing hurts.

However, the show must go on, and it occurred to me that writing another installment of MISCELLANY would be feasible despite my current disabilities.  Why?  Because in the MISCELLANY series, the general rule is that I only listen to one song per band from bands whose music I’ve never heard before, and then I dutifully record the results, not knowing in advance whether the music will or won’t be worthwhile.

Almost two months have passed since the last installment of this series, and the list of listening candidates has grown to gargantuan proportions. Confronted with so many choices, I decided to take the easy way out and simply pick the last three bands who contacted us (either directly or through a PR representative): Funeral Whore (The Netherlands), Falling Leaves (Jordan), and Parius (U.S. – Pennsylvania).

FUNERAL WHORE

What first caught my attention about this Dutch band was the news that their debut album, Step Into Damnation, would be released by the Mexican label Chaos Records (on February 27). I’ve had good luck with Chaos releases, and of course it didn’t hurt one tiny bit that the music was described with references to Grave, Unleashed, and Entombed.

To excite interest in the new album, Chaos has loaded their SoundCloud page with a Funeral Whore song called “Wasteland of Corpses”. I have listened to it, and it is a wasteland of corpses. With distortion levels dialed up, putrescent guitar leads, and grisly low-register vocals, it effectively channels old-school death/doom. Like a smoke-belching chainsaw, it saws away at whatever passes for pretty metal these days and leaves a ruin in its wake. And even though my aching head really is in no shape to bang, I couldn’t resist doing that at the 2:28 mark when the song shifts gears.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/33729249″ iframe=”true” /]

This song holds great promise for the album as a whole. Funeral Whore has a Facebook page here, and the album can be pre-ordered via this link.

FALLING LEAVES

Falling Leaves is a Jordanian band who recently completed a debut album called Mournful Cry of a Dying Sun. It includes guest vocal appearances by Paul Kuhr (November’s Doom), Josep Brunet (Helevorn), and Pim Blankenstein (Officium Triste, The 11th Hour), and guest violin performances by Pete Johansen (Tristania, Sirenia, Morgul and etc.) and Olof Göthlin. That’s an attention-grabbing line-up of guests.

The band’s principle guitarist Ala’a Swalha contacted us with a link to a YouTube teaser of music from the album, and that’s what I heard for purposes of this MISCELLANY expedition.

The teaser includes excerpts from many songs. The music is slow, sorrowful, and quite beautiful, with an appealing mix of bestial growls and clean, clear vocals. I found myself being swept away by the memorable, melancholy melodies, and this is only a teaser reel! I gather that the album as a whole includes 7 songs and a total running time of 41 minutes. This sounds like a must-listen for fans of melodic doom/death. Check it out:

You can connect with Falling Leaves on Facebook via this link. The band are searching for a label to assist in the release, so I don’t have a release date yet or information about how to get the disc.

PARIUS

Ryan Rauch, the guitarist for this new Philly-area band first contacted us last July. I meant to listen to their music then, but something happened and I was diverted. Probably by something important, such as the sound of my cat coughing up a hairball again. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take much to throw me off course.

But though I had forgotten about Parius, Parius didn’t forget about NCS, and they wrote again yesterday — and this time included an mp3 song file with their e-mail. Well, that made it very easy to press play, even in your editor’s physically debilitated state.

The song (apparently a new one) is called “Dark Horizons” and features guest solos by Chris Kelly and Mike DeMaria of another Philly band called Alustrium . I began listening, having forgotten whatever short-hand description of their music Parius had provided last July, so I was the proverbial blank slate, with no clue about what I would hear. It turned out to be engrossing.

The song begins slowly, with the deep thrum of a bass and a rippling lead guitar, but then ramps up into a jolting gallop of melodic death metal featuring a catchy multi-voiced chorus. But then it shifts into a different, even speedier rhythm, the rhythm guitars driving harder as a backdrop to a flashy guitar solo. Oh, but then the song changes again, the pace dropping and a dual-guitar solo taking center stage, before an up-tempo finish. In a nutshell, I enjoyed this jazzy song quite a bit. Here it is:

“Dark Horizons”

[audio:https://www.nocleansinging.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Dark-Horizons.mp3|titles=Parius – Dark Horizons]

Interested listeners can download this song and more Parius music from their Facebook band page at this location.

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That’s it for this MISCELLANY expedition, which turned out to be a very satisfying one. I will now crawl back into bed and whimper softly, while hoping for a brighter day tomorrow. As always, feel free to leave your reactions to these three bands in the Comments, and enjoy the rest of your fucking day.