Rose Funeral
Crucify.Kill.Rot

The modern extreme scene, while boasting numerous bands of absolute merit, on the other hand, presents many clone groups that simply reiterate what has been previously said by others, copying them slavishly and without originality, moving on soil that has already been tread many times without adding anything new. Particularly the metalcore branch, which often incorporates melodic death and new school hardcore elements, seems to be especially affected by this problem: the same angry and furious screaming, the same guitar riffs heard and reheard millions of times, cadenced moshcore rhythms of an astonishing flatness.

  Rose Funeral is a quintet from the United States (specifically from Ohio) formed in 2005 and this year debuted with the album "Crucify.Kill.Rot" without being preceded by demos or EPs, as is now fashionable among modern bands. Our group moves on a purely death metal track, with obvious hardcore influences and melodic riffs. The major influences are therefore those of Dying Fetus, Unearth, Despised Icon in the structures of the tracks, and Dark Tranquillity and In Flames for the melodic solutions adopted. The 10 tracks of the work are characterized, as per usual, by thrash-core accelerations and death metal style double pedal strikes, grind outbursts, and alternated growl and scream vocals. The cadenced mosh tempos are the ones that prevail for most of the work, making the songs very similar overall, instilling in the listener an annoying sense of boredom that especially sets in during the second half. But the main flaw of the group is the riffs, too similar to each other, so much so that it’s really hard to distinguish one passage from another: the impression you get after listening to the entire LP is that you’ve heard the same track 10 times.

 The dry and precise sounds of the guitar (and especially the drums) tend to make the sound too sparse and not full-bodied, proving to be not very incisive and monotonous. It's easy to understand why the best moments of the album are the atmospheric ones, placed in the middle of the album to break the tension (even though there's no need for it, since there's really no tension in this album): "Intereo Diu" and the first part of "Dawning The Resurrection" are suggestive and interesting interludes. There are stimulating ideas: in "Under A Godless Sky" there are dissonant and twisted riffs (in the second minute) that wouldn’t look out of place on a Cephalic Carnage album, but a few bursts here and there, some accelerations, and blastbeats submerged in a sea of indistinguishable cadenced mosh tempos are not enough to salvage an album like "Crucify.Kill.Rot", a record that burns out after a few listens and ends up inexorably in oblivion.