Funeral Mist
Maranatha

Maranatha: come, O Lord!

A typical liturgical invocation would fit in any black metal album like a square peg in a round hole. Fortunately, this is not just any black metal album, and the band in question, part of the elite label Norma Evangelium Diaboli (the name Deathspell Omega should be known to followers), is far from being a slavish and fruitless imitation of black metal canons. I still don't want to stray too much from the topic: this is undoubtedly black metal in every sense, but filled with new life and still immune to the wrinkles and banalities that have easily weakened the genre over the years.

However, one cannot deny the considerable influence that an extraordinary group like Deathspell Omega has had on this latest work (2009) by Funeral Mist: it is clear that the good Arioch (aka Daniel “Mortuus” Rosten, from Marduk with much love), six years after "Salvation," created "Maranatha" infusing it with that sacred, mystical, and fiercely religious aura that made "Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice" a masterpiece with all the bells and whistles; the result could only be another album with all the bells and whistles, even if it did not attract the same acclaim and attention.

Influences aside, "Maranatha" actually retains entirely unique atmospheres and nuances, well beyond the limits of eccentricity, offering us eight mad forays between the sacred and the sacrilegious that, in this album, seem to go hand in hand; thus, upon the frantic cries of a man (“It's the blood! It's the blood! It's the blood!” ... Guess who?) “Sword of Faith” suddenly bursts open in a cascade of unbalanced and edgy riffs, while a frenzied Arioch begins his harsh sermon packed full of exquisitely biblical references, aptly reversed, distorted, and magnified for the occasion.

Certainly, after a slap like that, one does not expect a drunken, funambulic, spirited, and rather atypical march like “White Stone”, just about tainted with ceremonial choirs and disturbing pulses, perpetually teetering between the ruthless and the grotesque; and after such an oddity, one is even less prepared for the second slap of “Jesus Saves!”, a crazed and euphoric whirlwind fit to turn the stomach destined to vanish abruptly in a few intense minutes of stark atmosphere with a vaguely Middle Eastern aftertaste. Amidst this chaos, a fanatical homily will raise the curtain on what is probably the most successful episode of "Maranatha": “Blessed Curse”, a slow and merciless marathon supported by an impenetrable wall of riffs and a hail of curses spat out without much regard by the good Arioch.

The element of surprise is always imminent: amidst authentic douses of vitriol (“Anathema Maranatha”) and more restrained tracks, strangled lullabies of putti (“Living Temples”) and flights of Gregorian chants will peek here and there (“A New Light”), perhaps serious, perhaps merely mocking, but given the ambiguity of the entire journey, I would lean towards both. Indeed, the malice in this album often takes on grotesque traits, just as the redundant and cultured lyrics, yet intriguing, would seem more of a subtle and sneaky provocation than mere wickedness for its own sake.

The sweet calvary concludes with a deliberately pompous and hieratic postlude complete with an orchestral closing, also grandiose and, underneath, self-ironic (“Anti-Flesh Nimbus”), leaving everything suspended in that aura of frantic and inhuman mysticism that infects every note of the album. It is certain that, whatever the message behind all this, “Maranatha” represents in today's black metal a separate chapter, isolated and probably a bit misunderstood for its excessive extravagance, but also a bless... Uh a panacea for a genre that risks slowly wearing itself out with its own models and stereotypes.

So you were an angry man on the earth? I’m an angry God in heaven!