Beats and yelling: Black Funeral

Flames of Sam​ū​m
Out 8^th September on Dark Adversary Productions

Black Funeral are perhaps the unlikeliest latter day acolyte for such staunchly conservative, by-the-numbers black metal. One of the US’s earliest adopters of the form, pillars of the third wave along with Judas Iscariot, Krieg, and Demoncy, their run of albums from 1995 to 2010 delights as much as it divides. Veering between highly traditional, mournfully melodic suites to aggressively abrasive, industrial fuelled noise and ambient experiments, ending with the defiantly hostile ‘Vukolak’ (if someone doesn’t rebut that 0% average on Metal Archives soon I will).

After a considerable hiatus, Black Funeral returned with ‘Ankou and the Death Fire’ in 2016, featuring such outrages as a lineup, a drummer, and melodies stretching from the amenable to the pleasant. 2020’s ‘Scourge of Lamashtu’ continued this trend. And now ‘Flames of Sam​ū​m’ adds a discordant, sloppy-if-charming chapter to this growing saga of concessions to listenability.

This really speaks to the difficulty we have in reading an album such as this, and the ongoing motivations behind this project. At the level of presentation, all the things we loved about Black Funeral and their polarising approach to black metal are present and correct. Dodgy musicianship, poorly tuned guitars, momentum killing dark ambient interludes, and melodic potential sacrificed on the alter of architectural simplicity, a pacing that will brook no populism, no appeal to an audience’s demand and addiction for the “hook”.

Despite this, one can’t help but leave with a sense that longtime band leader Michael Ford has regressed from cutting experiments in the limits of the form to mere occasional fan. Material from Black Funeral over the last decade can still rightly make headlines, and reliably sparking more talking points than the scene he used to provoke so thrillingly. But in the context of the challenges this artist used to offer on albums like ‘Az-i-Dahak’ and ‘Waters of Weeping’, one can’t help but lament how familiar and comforting Black Funeral have become.

That, combined with the explicitly mournful tone imbuing each track, leaves one with the impression of attending a wake for the era of black metal Black Funeral arose from. Its existence will of course continue in zombie form for many years. And Black Funeral’s rendering of it is competent, sincere, and imaginative enough to dodge accusations of pure pastiche. Ford is still steeped in his occultist and mythological inspirations, which prove enough to elevate what – in lesser hands – would be rather stale material. There is real world building at work behind ‘Flames of Sam​ū​m’.

But the returning characters across this album, the quotations from black metal history, the ruthless familiarity of the presentation, all speak of an artist happy to rest on its laurels and write the odd love letter to the scene, apparently unwilling or unable to challenge it further in any meaningful way.