Recently, end of April 2013, the band released a new demo called “Neunundvierzig”, that stands for "fourty-nine days”. So it is about time for stealing some time and writing about this weird, mammoth heavy band baptized with a German monicker and coming from the other side of the world. Well, Begräbnis are not like Corrupted, although there are a few features in common. One of the, probably least interesting, features is the adoption of a foreign language for tracks, album and chanting. Other features that are more intriguing for me involve music. Begräbnis started in 2011 in Sendai, Japan. At the time of the 2012 demo the band was including four members named as follows: Rosenkranz on death growl, Martyrer and Sargtrager on guitars and Grabraub on drums. Rosenkranz, a.k.a. Fumika, is a young lady possessing one of the most scary-sounding voices ever heard. Or maybe it is the contrast with the delicate-looking appearance … No no, the lady has got a true, nasty witche’s voice! Forget the warm, luring voices of the ladies in the occult doom rock bands: here the competition is with singers likeVanessa Nocera of Wooden Stake/Skeletal Spectre, Sharon Bascovsky in Derkéta or Katherin Katz in Salome! On the Facebook page that the band started not long ago, the name of the band seems to have lost the Umlaut, the diaeresis, and the band members listed are three and carry Japanese names (or nicknames): Fumika (the singer), Harima and Kyo.
I haven’t heard the new demo and there are no sample tracks to be heard on youtube or so, although pres notes on the website of the Japanese label distributing the new demo say that the new release is sounding more “pure" funeral doom, with “extremely slow low frequency guitar sound with funereal mood” plus those evil-dripping nasty vocals ….The less “pure” debut demo, Begräbnis, indeed encompasses various components that concur in making the overall sound extremely nasty and obscure as well as quite particular.The demo includes seven tracks in total, i.e. three 7 to 8 minutes-long suites accompanied by intro, outro and two short insets, for a total running time of 27:22 minutes. So, not terribly long, but enough for poisoning your mind … You can judge Begräbnis’ level of toxicity by yourself with the help of Youtube as there are videos of the band’s live exhibitions devoted to the three suites of the demo. The sounds in these videos are noisier than the demo CD but it’s fine: they get a sludgy noise and get even more toxic!
The intro is short and dark and immediately engulf you into the nightmare of this nasty occult tale. The suite Fur zur Höle is lead by a plodding rhythm lead by slow ritual drumming and cymbals. The distorted and downtuned guitars make up a sinister, vibrating feedback where the unearthly raspy, vocals of the banshee sing a sort of ultra-sick dissonant lullaby. The sulphureous ballad has a short, central part wich is totally silent apart from a few funereal blows on the drum and a few suffocated rants by the nasty witch. This silent interval introduces the second part of the ballad where deviations from the funeral doom mood are introduced: tempos speed up progressively, and even some groove is introduced via a short heavy metal guitar solo nested into fast death metal riffing. Awesome …The first untitled inset is quite exotic, very much “Japanese” and occult, with its ritual-sounding lithany and traditional percussions.
Suite Begräbnis starts with a slow, sinister, absolutely Sabbathian funereal melody where guitars and the nasty witch sing together. The witch does not need to shout or scream for making your blood curdle. Some formulas of her occult prayer are just whispered, and the quality of the demo is such that you think she is behind you back near your ear! But then the witche’s chant may rise to scary power especially when the riff-driven melodies turn to epic majesty, in the second part of the ballad. The second untitled inset is synth-driven and immediately evokes moods and atmosperes of retro horror movies, so that the long, soft, almost acoustic start of the last nasty ballad, Das Dunkel und Licht, i.e. the darkness and the light, sounds just like the expectation of something evil about to come. The witche’s voice is suffering, like a dying monster, maybe killed by the daylight. But it is a fake suffering: as as soon as the thundering doomy riffs and the occult percussions bring back the obscurity the monster gets back to non-life, and the nightmare starts again … In the few final minutes of this ballad the band again introduces some contaminattion via death metal with acceleratated and extremely downtuned riffing reminding of what heard in Father Befouled, Coffins, obviously Anatonia and similar acts. A short, ultra nasty blitz into death metal before the final Sabbathian vibration will put an end to the suite. But not to the nightmare, as suggested by the totally “cinematographic” outro …
So, Begräbnis are a quite promising funeral, or better sepulchral doom act indeed. In this demo they were able to craft some massive, pitch-black occult doom ballads with Sabbathian riffing and extreme distortion plus contamination by death metal, mainly. I didn’t perceived much the “industrial” components suggested by some posts I saw in the web. Anyway one of the elements of strength in this band is the coupling of the booming rhythmic section with the monster vocals in creating some amazingly scary tunes and moods, indeed. As to the contaminations, I enjoyed them very much. The live exhibitions on Youtube also show that the introduction of additional dirt and noise in the overall sound would be cool indeed. And would be something approaching this band’s sound a bit more to the “contaminated” but way dirty Corrupted. Useless to say, I am quite curious and have great expectations about the new demo by the trio Begräbnis, with or without umlaut …
Words: Marilena Moroni
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Begräbnis’ new demo | Weird Truth Recs