'Genocide ad Nauseam' is the first full length album from Funeral Feast. In the beginning, they played fast, ugly black metal with some punk influences, but this one is a different cup of bloody piss.

The first riff of the album fucking scared me; it's like straight from some nu-"metal" album, believe me! After four seconds, drums and ripping guitar kick in. The riff continues, but nu-shite is but a distant memory. Blackened death metal is the name of the game. Black metal influences remain most clearly in the lyrics and sometimes screeching vocals, but also in some guitar work, which at times is quite similar to Gehenna's 'Adimiron Black' (1998) album. While 'Genocide...' is uglier than your half-bald aunt, this is still far from 'Adimiron Black's insane musick. Funeral Feast like to go fast or faster, but thankfully they need to catch a breath every now and then, dropping to mid-paced grinding gear (grinding meaning no grindcore here). Generally, the riffing resembles American death metal, but as mentioned, those black metal influences are a good spicing (e.g. on 'Macabre Soul Decay'). 'God Pronounced Dead' clearly has something Swedish in its harmonics. The songs roll on without mercy, granting no boring moments for fans of this kind of stuff and 'Interlude' is a nice breather in between the assault. There are really no melodies to cling to, so this might not be very catchy that way, but good riffs are plentiful.

The vocals are very varying and every style work well together, not pulling into too many directions. Brutal stuff includes shrieking, deep growling, shouting, sometimes overlapping each other. There are some clean vocals too, nothing really sung, but normal voice and low speech. They work particularly well on 'God...', where every vocal style is utilized on the wonderful middle part of the song. On 'Macabre...' vocals remind me of latest Demigod, and so does the song, at least partly. The lyrics have anti-religious and misanthropic themes and they seem to have been written with more thought than usually.

Sound-wise this is a bit weird. Recorded at Pop Studio (what a fucking name is that, huh?!) by Mika Haapasalo. The sound is partly very powerful, especially the drums. During the blast parts the snare drum is naturally a bit weaker, but listen those bass drums firing like cannons! The bass guitar also slaps like hell. The guitars are oddly low on volume, muffled, especially the metal influenced ones. This is quite a big weakness for the album, to tell the truth. The playing is tight and multiple vocal tracks just make it all tighter. Good work for two days in studio...

'Genocide ad Nauseam' is a good debut album. While differing from the most of death metal music, it feels like something vital is missing. It is true originality and real hooks. Some songs are bloody good, e.g. 'Parasite' (one spiteful attack), 'Off with Their Heads' (a solid death metal piece) and 'God Pronounced Dead' (the best, varying song, from death to darker atmosphere), but some tend to pass by without any real impact. Well, at least if the blast ain't the only thing you seek.

Rating: 6½ (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
12/13/2003 01:40