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Black Funeral of Texas has had a long and divisive career. Helmed by one Akhtya Nachttoter (…), he has never been afraid to explore new boundaries for black metal, points of crossover with alien styles that others in metal have shied away from. This has of course produced mixed results, but I nevertheless welcome the effort. When not dipping into dark ambient and noise, the core of Black Funeral’s music is stripped back, extremely lo-fi black metal with an almost mechanical quality to it, which the programmed drums only go part of the way to explaining.
On 2016’s ‘Ankou and the Death Fire’, this ritualistic and minimal approach was married with more melodic and energetic riffs reminiscent of the Swedish school. Whereas previous releases laced the repetitive, jarring riffs with static, lending them a claustrophobic quality, here the cacophony has a muffled quality to it. This lends the music the feeling of being recorded outdoors, yet emanating from a distance. The ambient passages between each track further add to this emptiness. Although he cannot resist ample wind samples, his use of this filler technique is somewhat more intriguing than we’re used to. The music will merge and fade into the noise, and is granted added texture when layered with minimal dark ambient.
This is combined with a more mournful quality to the music than we are used to. Previous releases – whether noise or pure black metal or dark ambient – always played up the ‘evil’ aesthetic. It was raw, ritualistic black metal bent on creating a very specific atmosphere. This approach is particularly susceptible to failure, the kind of failure that tends to generate a humorous response. On ‘Ankour and the Death Fire’, Akhtya Nachttoter has opted to play it safer with the idiosyncrasies, but underpinning this is delicate, melodic riffcraft reminiscent of a lament at some moments, a call to arms at others.
Look for antecedents in early Graveland, as well as the heavy emphasis on repetition as a narrative tool. This may not be Akhtya Nachttoter’s most unique release, but it is undoubtably his most consistent both in terms of quality and execution. But more than that however, it is a fully realised piece of music, where previous releases were susceptible to moments of brilliance marred by utterly eyebrow raising cringe.
rafazardly 