Exhumation - Twilight of the Funebre Night
"Twilight of the Funebre Night" is some kind of funeral doom metal party music. It offers you nice ideas here and there, which together may want to give one an incentive to return to this release now and then. There is the opener for instance. Those odd psychedelic keyboards add a nice touch to his track, but sadly, these are limited to the beginning and the end of the track. This aspect of an addendum is not uncommon in a lot of "extreme" metal bands, when it comes to enrich their music on one way or another, but it leaves the rest of the music in a somewhat awkward situation, because at times the rest of the track struggles to offer something similar to the first minute or so. The evocation of a sacral or "horror-movie inspired" atmosphere adds a nice touch to the music, but not much more.
Exhumation's music suffers to some extent from the approach of having too many lyrics or rather, because in terms of the funeral doom metal metal scene even a limited amount of texts can be stretched over a considerable time-frame, with the obvious effect that the noise texture aka voice makes up a good portion of the track. Nice counterpoints to this are rare, but they can be found in nuances in either of the tracks. Leaving this aside, the intensity of the vocals is actually able to add something to the performance. This particular kind of growling fits well to the overall atmosphere of the tracks. Furthermore, the additional ones in "Funereal emanation", even though they are limited in length, add a nice touch to this track.
What needs to be emphasized are the drums. Their thudding sound adds something to this release. As do the rest of the instruments by the way. Maybe the production could be a bit more cavernous, a bit stranger and dirtier and therefore more intense, but this comes all down to personal preferences. Which is also reflected in the score. There are a lot of nice facets in these three tracks, but it feels as if more could be achieved with these elements that can be found on this ep. More variation, more daringness in the song-writing and the like could help this band. Like in the "Tears in the burial ground" for instance. The guitar part in the middle creates a nice diversion from the overall progression of the music.
A nice first release.