Petals

Funeralbloom

It's a common misconception thought up by those who dislike it, that metal is just […]
By Daniel Scoffield
November 25, 2014
Funeralbloom - Petals album cover

It's a common misconception thought up by those who dislike it, that metal is just unimaginative, horrid noise. It's one thing, which the metal family has in common. We all believe every form of metal is an art, in one form or another. However, the issue with FUNERALBLOOM is that, it is just unimaginative noise, and this is coming from someone who was raised on metal, and pretty much lives and breaths metal.

The musicians are talented, don't get me wrong, and I have respect for someone who actually manages to produce an album (or EP in this case, despite the over the top length for only four songs). At times, there are nice melodic guitar parts, which could easily make you fall in love. But the rampage of instruments, which are so muddled up together, at one point I couldn't work out what instrument was what. The opening song "Black Shoes" is the best example of this. Nice intro and guitar playing at the start, but then just leading to a barrage of, well, noise. Especially when you've got Austin Curtis essentially screaming the word brah, which is a word, which should never be used anyway, let alone in a metal band. Although, we do occasionally get a bit of clean singing.

The band themselves, describe themselves as dark, and ambient, which shows obviously during the song "Naked". You can hear some of the ambient synth, which works pretty dang well over the sound of a snare being hit at four times per second. But again, you can't hear the guitar during this, because of the barrage of noise. Going back to Austin Curtis and the vocals, it becomes apparent in this song he isn't just screaming brah. He isn't even screaming words. He's literally screaming whatever comes to his head. This would be fine if each song wasn't 9+ minutes, and if you could hear the vocals properly. Nope, the vocals don't actually sound like they where mixed into the recording properly. My respects to Tyler Torres, because the drumming on this album is actually pretty good.

Going back to the genre (well, the one they described themselves as), I've never heard anyone ever say, "Hey, lets listen to some ambient metal". FUNERALBLOOM are the only band I've heard described as Ambient Metal. I suppose at least in "Naked" you can hear the guitar near the end (for maybe the last 2 minutes), but then it hits you, you can't hear any bass! A good album, no matter what genre, has everything mixed so you can hear it clearly. Otherwise there's no point that instrument even being in the song.

In summary, this band has lots of talent, but they should rethink their genre, and the way the mix things for the next album. With shortened noise instead of 40 minutes of my life spent listening to unimaginative, badly recorded noise. Still, like I said, there's talent within the members of FUNERALBLOOM. Just please, nothing else like "Petals". Ever again.

4 / 10

Nothing special

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"Petals" Track-listing:

1. Black Shoes
2. Cherry Orchard
3. Lust
4. Naked

Funeralbloom Lineup:

Austin Curtis - Vocals
Bryan Walters - Bass
Jad Dandashi - Guitars
Nick Ross - Guitars
Tyler Torres - Drums

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