Hearse "Traipse Across The Empty Graves" CD

Jewelcase-CD with 8-page-booklet.
Recorded, mixed & mastered at Fermentation Recordings, Boothwyn, Pennsylvania.
Cover painting "Memento Mori still life with musical instruments, books, sheet music, skeleton, skull and armour" by Carstian Luyckx (1650).

Released back in January through Sinistrari Records, ‘Traipse Across the Empty Graves’ is the debut full length from American funeral doom band Hearse, but they were actually formed way back in 1997, and released a couple of demos around that time too. It has been over 20 years since then though, an appropriately slow amount of time for funeral doom perhaps? ‘A Pinebox Penance’ comes from the kind of industrial heartland that Sabbath did, and so there is immediately a sense of kinship with Iommi’s riffs, while a low and potent growl fills the space above. The music is a lot faster than I expected, coming in with a more propulsive Candlemass style churn rather than the more Winter/Thergothon approach. At least to start with, as we slowly descend into the depths of the record the more funereal it gets. ‘Groans Below’ is a dismal, abyss yearning yet soulful dirge while the incredible melodic solo from ‘The Wraith in the Fog’ tears through that enveloping darkness like a lightning flash in the dark night. That initial touch of pace is firmly gone by the time ‘The Hopeless Realm’ rolls around, and the crushing morose guitar work and weeping atmosphere combines to create a special moment. The powerful growls really come into their element during the funeral fury of ‘His Majesty’, which scrapes the very bowels of the abyss for heaviness, followed by the Winter-esque dirge of ‘Coma’. But the absolute peak of the band’s descent into stomach churning, hellish funeral doomscapes is ‘The Nightmares Have Come’, a gloriously bleak trudge through misery and doom. By the time closer ‘In the Abstract Abyss’ comes to its juddering, Autopsy-laden deathly conclusions, it is obvious that despite the long hiatus of material, Hearse have not lost a step and that their particular brand of striding funeral doom is very effective. ‘Traipse Across the Empty Graves’ is a record that gradually drags you into your inexorable demise amongst black holes and the endless voids, and you’ll enjoy every moment.

Sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...