Funeral Whore - Step Into Damnation

Funeral Whore are a fairly new band to me. While doing some research before this review, I noticed that they were Dutch, which is ace because in the early days of this blog I spent many a post talking about different Dutch bands. This album was released earlier this year by Mexican record label Chaos Records. On Step Into Damnation, Funeral Whore present eleven tracks of crushing death metal.

Tracklist:-

1. Eternal Genocide

2. Wasteland of Corpses

3. Obidience

4. Camp Blood

5. El Salvador Death Squad

6. Step Into Damnation

7. The Bitch Died

8. Pierce My Flesh

9. Threesome

10. Failure of the Sacrifice 

11. Buried in Hell

The first thing that strikes you when Step Into Damnation kicks off is the old-school sound that Funeral Whore have gone for on this release. The guitars buzz along underneath the drums and the death metal growls are deep. The music ranges from full-throttle death metal madness, to really cool mid-paced metal.

The start of Wasteland of Corpses sounds like it's been taken over by a sludge band, as it chugs along before building up and smashing you upside the head! The band is able to switch pace seamlessly, without losing any impact and they seem at their best when they are favouring the mid-paced sections.

Obidience includes some brilliant clean guitar melodies, which help bring variation to Funeral Whore's outright death attack. Camp Blood is pretty ferocious, with some of the lowest death growls heard on the record. I find that In can't really categorise these guys, as normally you can think of a band similar, but I'm struggling which is a good thing as I don't really like to categorise bands anyway.

I really like the clean guitar picking that goes on in El Salvador Death Squad. Each song here hovers around the 3-4 minute mark, so songs don't outstay their welcome and leave you with a lasting impression. The sweeping guitar at the start of The Bitch Died gives you an indication of Funeral Whore's influences and the drumming is incredible, as you'd expect.

With the amount of bands peddling death metal nowadays, you'd be forgiven for thinking that you'd heard them all before, but Funeral Whore do put a lot of effort

into making their take on the genre sound interesting and varied. From the fast to the slow, they have loads going for them. Their thrash metal influences shine through at key points on the record, which should help them appeal to a wider audience.

During the final few tracks, Funeral Whore well and truly hit their stride and start to sound really assured. They weave enough ideas into tracks like Failure of The Sacrifice to keep you interested and to make you realise that they ain't messing around. Overall this is a devastating but well played death metal by a band that clearly care about their art.

Head over to http://www.facebook.com/pages/Funeral-Whore to see what the band are up to and go to buy the album http://www.chaos-records.com/label/.