Digipak limited to 100 copies!!
Kardec, the man behind FUNERARIUM, seems to be a textbook case of extreme work ethic. 2018: one demo, two EPs, two LPs; 2019: a split, four singles, four LPs; 2020: one single, one EP, four LPs; 2021: one single, two LPs; 2022: two LPs; 2023: one LP to date, namely "Ancient Astronauts," released on the Acid Vicious label, whose catalog (BROYEUR D’ENFANCE, GERGOVIA, UNDR, etc.) cannot be praised enough; being signed to them is a guarantee of quality. The Frenchman has thus moved beyond independent status to finally land a record deal, and even if it's only for this album, it's already clear recognition of his involvement in the French black metal scene.
Objectively lacking the time to explore FUNERARIUM's entire discography, I'll take this album for what it is: a roughly forty-minute piece with ten tracks (there's a bonus track on the CD version) dealing with the ancient astronaut theory. While more ufological than scientific, I've always found it fascinating due to its numerous connections with history, archaeology, and religions. This movement has obviously influenced many works, both fantastical and otherwise, from Lovecraft to Indiana Jones, by way of Kubrick, Predator, and Stargate… In any case, I highly recommend watching the documentary series "Alien Theory," formerly broadcast on Arte, which perfectly summarizes the ins and outs of this theory—conspiratorial for some who aren't surprised that the military and governments systematically destroy "evidence" of extraterrestrial life. Anyway, that's not the point today, but as for the concept, I'm already sold. I often look to the sky hoping a massive spaceship will come and block out the sun and put an end to all this crap. That or the beast of the Apocalypse according to Saint John, what's the difference anyway? We just need to be done with humanity once and for all. We've let the reptilian pedophiles and Satanists take power; nothing will save us now.
So, this "Ancient Astronauts" is definitely black metal, as cosmic as it is atmospheric, a bit like if DARKSPACE were flirting with the LIMBONIC ART of "Epitome of Illusions" or "In Abhorrence Dementia," and I'm simply blown away from the very first listen. How can they maintain such a prolific work rate and still pay such close attention to the writing, the production, and the artwork? The minutes spent with these ten tracks are an interstellar journey where the listener is lost in the vast, empty blackness of space. Clearly, the feeling of absolute solitude is the first thing that comes to mind when this hateful chanting arises, its frequency shifts merely variations, modulations of the abandonment of everything, by everyone. Musically, we oscillate between weightlessness and freefall, the tempos varying according to the desired atmosphere, raw black metal never far from this journey, this quest for the third kind.
I don't know if it was the same for previous albums, but here the keyboards have clearly taken control. It's not that the guitars are absent, far from it; it's just that they rise up more like pillars, monolithic structures that offer an immense field of expression to the synthesized scores. So don't expect memorable riffs or high-flying guitar virtuosity; here, the instrument is conceived more as a sonic layer, a foundation, a launching pad for what surrounds it: the voice of inhumanity, spectral atmospheres, the cold melodies of a world fleeing from itself and hoping to find the reasons for its existence in some improbable elsewhere.
While "Ancient Astronauts" is my first encounter with this strange entity that is FUNERARIUM, it certainly won't be the last. The arguments presented here have made it clear to me that it would be detrimental not to continue exploring Kardec's work, whose teeming imagination could fuel a hundred hostile planets.
Sample: youtube.com/watch?v=cTDJ141XWrg&t=2248s
