Funerary Call - The Black Root

Funerary Call is a Ritual Dark Ambient act from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Since 1994, H. MacFarlane has been creating unsettling atmospheric electronic compositions. He has often been considered to be one of the fathers of ritual/black ambient music. He also goes by the alias of Sistrenatus.

'The Black Root' was originally released in 2004 on LP by the Polish label Fluttering Dragon. The album was remastered and reissued with new artwork as a CD in December of 2010 on the Australian label Fall of Nature Records. The album contains 8 songs and has a running time less than one hour.

While this album has all the telltale signs of a Ritual Dark Ambient album, such as the dark and disturbing sounds of occultist and ritualistic chants amongst deep, foreboding drones, I feel that this album falls more under the genre of Noise Ambient laced with elements of Drone Ambient. Particularly, I think this album borders on the lines of the sub-genre of Isolationism. After a few songs I found myself feeling as if I was locked away in a dark dungeon, chained up in a cold, dank room. As the songs progressed, I felt as if I was trapped in my prison cell, hearing the sounds coming from other rooms, and slowly going insane at the thought of being unable to escape the impending doom waiting before me. At times, the feeling was downright scary.

However, the typical sounds of Ritual Ambient were often lost under the more noisy elements of these musical compositions. The music does get pretty intense at a few spots where the sound envelops the room, but then progressively becomes quieter. This album has an inescapable Industrial feel to it and borders along the lines of Power Noise at times. Upon first listen, it reminded me of a more ambient Converter or perhaps a few of the ambient works by Manufactura. I also heard a bit of Sephiroth amidst the quieter portions of the album.

One thing I didn't like about this album was how repetitive it was. I like when Dark Ambient albums set a scene and tell a story. 'The Black Root' set the scene, for me it was a dungeon, but it didn't quite take me anywhere else. By the end of the album, I felt like I had listened to one really long song and I felt a bit exhausted, but perhaps that was the point of this musical creation. Perhaps MacFarlane wanted to touch upon the darkest corners of our soul to find what evils lie within, at 'The Black Root.' And in that case, he definitely succeeds at creating a foreboding inescapable atmosphere of dread and despair. You are in for one hell of a ride. Oct 18 2012