Reviews list for Funeral Winds - Essence (2021)

Funeral Winds are basically black metal fundamentalists heading for thirty years of existence in one form or another, the current of which is as a solo project of founder Hellchrist Xul. This is real old-school, early second wave, snarling, savage black metal, driven by pummelling blastbeats that fans of early Mayhem, Immortal, Darkthrone etc will recognise only too readily. Hellchrist Xul's croaking vocals are similar to Abbath on the early Immortal albums and is a style I particularly enjoy hearing I must admit. I guess the title refers to the album's attempt to distill black metal down to it's purest essence and it would be hard to argue than it hasn't been successful in doing so, now whether that has any relevance depends on your point of view. Personally I don't rate it as highly as previous album, Sinister Creed, but I feel it still has a place here in 2021 if only to remind us that there are still artists who don't give two f*cks about trends or fads and only want to create a blasphemous, hellish racket and I'm right behind that.