From the Facebook page, "ANCIENT EMBLEM was born from the passion for gloomy and raw sounds of four individuals which were coming from different past projects, but with many points in common such as a strong believe in DIY as the only way for working as a band, and an even stronger hate for any authoritarian attitude which tries to dominate others, being human or not. They believe in a veg(etari)an way of life and stand against all kinds of domination and discrimination such as religion, homophobia, sexism, speciesism, racism, fascism or nazism. Hailing from Spain, "Funeral Pyre" is their sophomore album, and contains seven new tracks.

"A Crown of Lies" opens the album, with a thick and meaty sound, and muted production. It takes a slow grind for a spell, following two different riffs before the main sound drops. It's Black Metal alright. Harrowing riffs and vocals, and that wall of guitars and drums. The sounds is fairly amateur in nature. "Arise" opens with strange chanting...almost angel like in their structure. But a riff comes in pretty quickly after, slow and low. Then comes the chaos. Once it gets going, it's hard to discern much of a structure.

"Unwavering" opens with odd and eerie background noise and the whistling of the wind. The slow, lumbering pace is full of anguished vocals and steady drums, until they let loose again, and everything goes chaotic. "Winter Solstice" follows a similar sound and pattern. It opens slowly and then goes for broke. One thing the album isn't short on is repetitiveness. The songs begin to blur together and the horrible production doesn't help much. "Farewell" opens with jumpy guitar notes that are fast picked and blast beat drumming. A more discernible riff pattern eventually develops, but it's pretty standard Black Metal.

"The Journey" again follows a similar pattern of slow opening followed by near complete chaos. This repetitiveness does not make for a very likable listening experience. "Funeral Pyre" closes the album. It opens with clean guitar notes that build into another frenzy. The amateur quality I was talking about earlier isn't necessarily a bad thing, but when the songs become indistinguishable, the album as a whole suffers. I love their attitudes and the album cover is pretty cool, but the music needs a lot of work.