Mournful Congregation - The Book of Kings
For some reason I felt this was going to be these Aussie Funeral Doom veterans’ defining album. Coming off 2009’s breakthrough album, The June Frost, and a rare tracks compilation that really grew on me, I just had that feeling. Well, I was half right. Opening cut, “The Catechism of Depression,” is the best song they’ve ever written. A simply amazing song that explodes into total Doomgasm after an acoustic bridge at about 12:17… holy shit! The remaining seven minutes of this arrangement are among Funeral Doom’s, nay, recorded music’s, finest moments. When the vocals come in, Damon Good’s defeated guttural roar, it is absolutely mesmerizing. And then when the ghostly clean backing vocals come in, they take the song to yet another infinitely dismal level. There… right there. That’s what my life sounds like. This transitions into a variation of the riff, with the subtle bend, the pinch harmonic, the drummer nonchalantly mixing it up a bit, and then the second guitar comes in and you realize you just totally got lost in the music. Which should be the goal. The fadeout… musical perfection achieved. Unlike my life, I didn’t want it to end. The second track, “The Waterless Streams,” is a bit adventurous for these guys. I could be wrong but this may be their first ever song with no Death/Doom vocals. It’s a very Stainthorpe-esque warbly moan, close to spoken word, but it works for the dreary, funereal vibe the song possesses. A very Hammett-like gem of a guitar solo near halfway in. Soloing is no easy task at such slow speeds. You can’t fake it. The song dissolves into a very Katatonic ending, and at this point I feel like standing to applaud. Then we come to “The Bitter Veils of Solemnity.” Damn it! There’s no way I can sugar coat it, it’s twelve minutes of acoustic guitar with whispering. Let me type that again, and this time I want you to really focus on the ellipses. Twelve minutes… of acoustic guitar… with whispering. It’s pretty, but it’s too much pretty. Plus I want to listen to the first song again. The last song, the title track, is 33 minutes long. God damn, that’s a risky move for any band, but for a Funeral Doom band, it’s suicide (no pun intended). That’s really long, fellas. I don’t really even need a blowjob to last 33 minutes. There is more brilliant slow motion axework here, but at that length it’s a challenge to sit through. I tried but my destroyed mind wandered. Plus I want to listen to the first song again… on repeat… for several days. If these guys could ever make an entire record as good as that, and quit trying to merely outslow everybody, they could rule the world.
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