Infinite Grievance - Funeral Mile

INFINITE GRIEVANCE - Funeral Mile
2012
Indie

Infinite Grievance is a two-piece band from Calgary, Alberta. It specializes in funeral doom, or a very slow form of death metal. You may not have heard of it as the band doesn't tour (in fact, it doesn't play live at all), and its records have not been distributed except in a digital form, by the band. We talk here about the true independant DIY experience.

So what is Funeral Mile? It is the second full length in the band's discography, if we count the 2010 Delusions of Clarity album. Other than that, Infinite Grievance also issued two demos, one split and one compilation, all in 2010.

Funeral Mile has 6 songs, ranging from 3 to 12 minutes, for a total of over 47 minutes of music. The short but excellent "Toska" serves as some kind of intro to the album. It doesn't do much other than offering a general solemn mood to the album, and preparing the grounds for "Drown". This second song is deep and very depressive, and reminds me of the excellent bands Loss and Mourning Congregation. So far, this is good material in the purest tradition of funeral doom, there are no surprises and no deceptions. To change the pace of the album (but not the mood), it is followed by the title track, a repetitive and mechanic song that pushes the listener into a state of vertigo and crushing movement. Strangely enough for a title track, "Funeral Mile" might take more time to digest compared to the other songs. "Fade With Time", is cleverly placed between two 9-minutes songs, and like the narrow passage on the cover artwork, it brings fresh air to the whole heaviness of this album, in a melancholic atmosphere reminiscent of early Anathema or Thergothon. However, the sky darkens again under the shape of "In Mourning They Damn Your Name", another slab of funeral doom in the same vein as the first 2 songs. With oppressive discomfort, it is dragging miserably (in a good way), and constitutes the funeral hymn at the heart of the album. As this track ends, a cold wind from the deep takes over, and serves as a brilliant transition to the last song. "Receding Frost" is an instrumental that sums up the album with a desolate atmosphere.

Musically speaking, Infinite Grievance doesn't bring any new water to the wheel. Although its guitar sound is really heavy, and has the right amount of both sustain and definition, it sounds pretty generic for a funeral doom band. Same with the vocals, bass and drum, which are very standard. For this reason, newcomers to the genre might find it dull and tasteless. On the other hand, funeral doom is a style that has become very traditional over time, and the bands are often described in relation to the cult landmarks of the genre. In this context, I would say that Infinite Grievance's Funeral Mile would compare easily with any roaster of the favourite russian doom label Solitude Productions (Astral Sleep, The Howling Void, Helllight, Funeral, Inborn Suffering, etc). Its strength might not lie in one specific song, and it may not be opening any new grounds, but the band is very competent at producing an excellent album for the genre.

Links to the albums and the band:
http://infinitegrievance.bandcamp.com/album/funeral-mile
http://infinitegrievance.blogspot.ca/
www.facebook.com/IGDOOM

Lebensraum - Lebensraum (EP)

LEBENSRAUM - Lebensraum
2012
Indie

The first thing that caught my attention might have been the beautiful logo and artwork. A DIY enterprise, this CD is housed in a 2-panel digipak, where black and grey are the main ingredients. Here we find the themes of nature and darkness, probably more associated with black metal than any other style. However, the content displays something else.

This is the first EP from Montreal Lebensraum. This 33-minutes cd speaks the doom language with great skills: it uses influences from the late '70s Sabbath riffing to contemporary funeral doom arrangements. As displayed by its cover, the Lebensraum EP is coated with black metal in a degree that I've rarely seen (the only band I'm thinking of might be Lurk). Once we venture through Lebensraum, it gets cold, very cold, and we can barely see the sun peeking through this ominous forest.

So what exactly means Lebensraum? You might have guessed, it's german. It's a concept about "living space" developed in the 19th Century about unification and adding territories or colonies. The idea was further transformed by Hitler to justify the expansion of Nazi Germany, especially on the Eastern front. Pretty dark theme for a blackened doom band.

The journey that we experience going through the Lebensraum EP is a very interesting one. Starting on a funeral doom note, it goes black and then comes back towards more familiar stoner doom territory, all that in 5 songs of uneven length. Breaking it down track by track might be the best way to dissect this piece of blackened art. In a grandiose manner, the EP opens with "This I Doom", an epic 11 min 47 song that presents Lebensraum as a band, music and musicians alike: words are spoken in both death metal style and black metal rasp; the guitars sound is sharp and dry, the lead guitar bringing accents of desolation with very simple notes sustained in the background; the bass guitar adds some interesting and infectious bass routine towards the end of the song, a method of composition that is also used on other tracks; while the drum displays both laid back doom beats and details of unorthodoxy earned from other genres. We all know what the band can deliver when "Scorbutus" kicks in at a more standard pace, bringing the listener further into darkened territories with its catchy riff. The journey takes a left-hand path and the listener meets its maker on the third and central song, "Final Path". Here, Lebensraum takes it time, using long pauses and slow pounding riffs, creating an evil and uneasy atmosphere similar to black metallers Marduk and Blodsrit, before bursting into a trash metal attack. In contrast to this song, the following "An Old Man" looks like the lighter song of the EP, mostly because of the stoner groove, although the vocals stay tuned on the dark side and the drum keeps hitting sadistically. Finally, "Dormant Giant" follows that trend and offers some early Maiden-meets-Sabbath riffs, while the vocals are more distant than on any other song. This is one hell of a song to finish an EP and making a statement that there is room for more to come.

Check it out here: http://lebensraum.bandcamp.com/album/lebensraum