Funeral Dirge for the Rotting Sun

Goatwhore | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 26, 2003)
• Original Release Date: 2003
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Rotten
• ASIN: B0000AZKMS
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #145,080 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Goatwhore, October 7, 2004

By 

Stalkz - See all my reviews

This review is from: Funeral Dirge for the Rotting Sun (Audio CD)

Ahahah.. you think Cradle of Filth is black metal? Aaaaahahahahahahah

That's rich.

Anyways, yeah. Good album.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Something's missing, August 29, 2005

By 

Daniel H. Ekman (Potomac, MD United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Funeral Dirge for the Rotting Sun (Audio CD)

Despite the somewhat low rating for the album, I am a fan of Goatwhore. I saw them at Art of Noise Tour 2 with Amon Amarth, Vader, Kreator, and Nile, and I honestly thought that they were the best live act there. That's saying a lot. As the previous reviewer mentioned, if you ever get a chance to see this band live, do it. Their energy, charisma, and precision is unmatched.

That said, I feel this album is lacking comparing to the excellent The Eclipse of Ages Into Black. That album was one of the best and most diverse post-millenium black metal albums I have ever heard. As mentioned, this band does a good job mixing various styles such as black, death, sludge, and even some doom metal. It's not even that the songs are terrible. Sky Inferno(track 6) is actually one of the best songs they have written. But as a whole, this album fails to stack up. This lies in a few factors.

First and foremost is the riffs. While they are still good, the tone of the riffs tend to blend together from song to song. Also, there are none that jump out at you as being extremely emotional or majestic, such as the riff in track 8(Name escapes me) of their first album.

Which brings me to the second problem; the production. The drums and guitars are too tightly meshed together in the mix, and as a result, both sound a little bit hollow, and lack the crispness of the first album. This especially hurts the riffs, and is possibly one of the reasons why they lack the atmospheric tone of their previous albums. It also hurts the drumming, which is also simply less diverse than the last album.

Which brings me to the final problem: The Diversity. While it is true that Goatwhore mixes styles very well, it's almost as if they put all of their styles into a blender and left them in the blender too long. As a result, none of the unique styles stand out and it sort of comes of as being half-sludge/half-death, with a touch of black metal influence. This also hurts the song structures and tones, which lack the variety of "The Eclipse of Ages Into Black." In fact, what separated that album from all other great black metal albums is that, while it had a very depressing atmosphere, each song was extremely different in both structure and tone, as were the instruments from song to song. One song could have grind drumming with black metal riffs and vocals, one could have sludge riffs with rock drumming and black vocals, another could have death vocals, riffs, and drumming, and yet another could have doom vocals, riffs and drumming. In short, grind/death/doom/black/sludge/etc. were all prevalent throughout the album, and yet, they are all allowed to stand out within the context of a depressing and hellistic atmosphere that marked the early 90's black metal hayday. The Funeral Dirge album is lacking the most in both diversity and atmosphere.

In short, if you are a big fan of Goatwhore, or even a fan of sludgy death metal, you will likely enjoy this. However, for black metal fans or fans looking for an introduction to Goatwhore, start with their first album. Hopefully, their Metal Blade debut will accentuate the traits of their first album.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars not bad for being a band from louisiana, February 21, 2005

By 

E. Lasalle (Turlock,california) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Funeral Dirge for the Rotting Sun (Audio CD)

i have to admit that i like these guys,and would recommend to anyone who wants to hear something alittle different than the average black metal band,and by the way....although the cd says cdcopywrited on it doesnt mean it cannot be copied...the only way i could do it was using the windows media to (rip the tracks on media and then burn it on a blank disc,and it worked successfully,so if anyone else out there is having the same problem with that particular album to just try windows media..anyway i like these guys and i feel everyone should be open minded and give em a try..