FUNERAL - Funeral

FUNERAL, made up of seasoned figures from Lima’s underground scene, refuses to confine itself to a single genre on its debut recording, instead allowing different styles to bleed into one another. Released on September 25 through a joint effort between CALIGARI RECORDS and BLACK LEGION RECORDS, the five-track "Funeral" is a roughly 16-minute record focused less on sustained atmospheric development than on creating a direct physical impact. What defines the recording is the way its black metal, punk/hardcore and deathrock elements continually transform one another through their rhythmic character.

The opening track, 'Bala Perdida', reveals FUNERAL’s approach within a matter of minutes. A thick, aggressive bass line anchors the song in punk, while the guitars’ dissonant passages soon give way to the tremolo-picked and blast beat-driven world of black metal. These transitions are abrupt, but never arbitrary; the drums become the primary force determining the song’s direction. The same riff can sound as though it belongs to an entirely different genre once its rhythmic framework changes. The more measured sections that appear between the bursts of speed do not interrupt this momentum, instead bringing the hardcore side further to the forefront. The contrast between the vocals’ high-pitched screams and the more uncontrolled, almost deranged-sounding howls completes this musical tension.

The black metal side comes more clearly to the fore on 'Averno'. Even so, the drums never completely abandon their punk-derived drive, preventing the track from becoming a conventional black metal exercise. Tremolo picking and blast beats intensify the raw character during the faster sections, while the bass keeps the record’s punk vein alive throughout. In FUNERAL’s music, then, it is not simply guitar tone or vocal style that carries the shifts between genres, but the rhythmic backbone of the songs themselves.

'Almas En El Abismo' reveals the more melodic side of this approach. Rather than being as immediately aggressive as the riffs on the preceding tracks, they lean toward motifs that enhance memorability. The guitar tone and melodic lines, where the deathrock influence is more pronounced, add a brief sense of unease while the underlying punk momentum remains intact. In fact, the song’s mid-tempo structure and its cadences, which approach the Oi! tradition when stripped of the vocals, demonstrate just how easily FUNERAL closes the distance between extreme metal and punk. Melody is not used here as decoration; it becomes one of the primary tools through which the song stays in the listener’s memory.

'Tumbas Vacias' once again puts the bass guitar at the center, establishing a more crust-oriented character. The guitars’ unsettling melodies and the vocals’ echoing, more cavernous tone expand the deathrock side of the sound, while touches of gang vocals emphasize the song’s hardcore roots. FUNERAL’s melodic approach becomes clearer here as well: the band does not use melody through a clean or polished aesthetic, but within dirty guitar tones, repetition and dark harmonic colors. As a result, the memorability of the songs does not come at the expense of their rawness.

The closing 'El Entierro' brings the black metal attack back to the forefront. Guitars accelerated by blast beats and a sharp bass line carry the punk energy heard at the beginning of the record into a more savage black metal framework. Yet the fundamental characteristic established throughout the recording remains intact: speed is not an end in itself. The rhythmic weight of the bass and the melodic and dissonant movement of the guitars give the track a sense of character beyond mere velocity. The limited atmospheric impact of the final section is also significant; FUNERAL creates a dark mood not through expansive ambience or extended atmospheric passages, but through the sheer harshness of the performance itself.

At this point, the production choices also prove consistent with the music’s character. Mixed and mastered by Will Killingsworth at Dead Air Studios, the recording stays clear of the separated, sterile approach associated with modern extreme metal. The prominence of the bass is particularly important, as it is one of the primary elements carrying the band’s punk/hardcore side. The guitars occasionally acquire a dirty, old-school character through chorus and echo effects, while the drums retain their raw energy. The vocals’ confinement to a single mode of attack occasionally narrows the album’s expressive range; however, this monotony does not feel entirely out of character given FUNERAL’s deliberate reliance on a direct and abrasive sonic aesthetic.

What stands out about "Funeral" is not simply its combination of different genres, but its ability to alter the function of those genres within the same composition. A riff can begin with a black metal character before approaching punk through a rhythmic intervention from the drums; the bass can bring the deathrock atmosphere to the foreground; or a mid-tempo section can open toward hardcore and Oi! associations. At the same time, FUNERAL does not yet come across as a band that develops its ideas through broad dynamics, complex songwriting or expansive atmosphere-building. The music’s impact is established primarily through attitude, rhythmic drive and the directness of its riffs.

"Funeral" is therefore a debut that combines black metal’s aesthetic language with the physical momentum of punk/hardcore and the unsettling melodic colors of deathrock, while clearly establishing its own working logic despite its brevity. By continually shifting the center of gravity between rhythm, bass, guitar tone and tempo rather than repeating the same formula across all five tracks, the album becomes more than a sum of its genres. FUNERAL still has territory left to explore, but this first recording makes clear just how forcefully and directly the experience of Lima’s underground scene can be transformed into a musical language.

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