Funeral Moth

Transience

Quiet bloom of the soul
dB rating: 8/10

Release Date: March 13th, 2016
Label: Weird Truth

If you are fortunate enough to be yet vulnerable to extreme metal’s effects, e.g. if minor chords played slowly leave you crestfallen, if soaring solos lift your spirits, if blast beats make your eye twitch with rising ire, then approach Funeral Moth’s sophomore album, Transience, with caution. For not only have these Japanese doom weavers completely revolutionized their sound, and quite possibly the whole of funeral doom along with it, they have also crafted the most crushing, yet most introspective, sublime and heartfelt record I’ve heard since Thergothon’s Fhtagn nagh Yog-Sothoth. Seriously. I was cleaning my apartment when I first jammed Transience, and not a minute in I had to lie on the floor and just close my eyes. It was like yoga for my metal sensibilities.

Like Hex-era Earth enlisted Niko Skorpio to help them score some lost Kurosawa masterpiece, the riffs—what else to call them?—seem paced by some lunar pull. The vocals are sparse, but always outstanding. Growls croaked by some monster with two heads of varying size and vocal timbres segue into dirge-throated oms then into whispers like dying oaths from a self-disemboweled samurai. All while the sundry instrumentation wraps around you like a cocoon, as if Funeral Moth were in the room with you, ghosts, but unquestionably present. And although there will be a particular feeling Transience gives you, every time you hear this record it will sound somehow different. Certain refrains you’ll remember, but nuances will shift. Such is the parallax of an artistic monument.

—Dutch Pearce
This review taken from the July 2016 issue.