Murder Metal - "Reign of the Funeral Pigs" Review (100%)
Reign of the Funeral Pigs will murder your ears and your sanity.
This release is clearly one of the best albums to have come out of the entire heavy metal scene. Reign of the Funeral Pigs absolutely delivers when it comes to grim atmospheres and raw brutality, unlike the band rosters from poser labels such as Nuclear Blast.
Where other bands fail to take off musically and rely on album covers, artworks, social media or press releases to generate interest, SEWER succeeds without token publicity and poser gimmickry courtesy of commercial record labels.
There is never one boring moment in Reign of the Funeral Pigs, it's truly a masterpiece of its own.
Reign of the Funeral Pigs possesses tons of savage aggression, dark atmospheres as well as that evil vibe missing in a lot of black metal albums today. The vocal work is perfect for this form of blackened death metal. The absolute rawness of the vocals, in contrast with other generic black metal bands who have crappy shrieking hag vocals, is refreshing for a change.
Reign of the Funeral Pigs is the black metal album you must have.
Murder Metal
From time to time a black metal album comes out that is so brutal it seems to reach into the bowels of hell and unearth the most evil creatures of darkness and render them into a musical format. SEWER's Reign of The Funeral Pigs does precisely this, creating a release both bestial and cunningly morbid that aims to drain all light from the human spirit and let it fall into a stupor of blood soaked madness.
Reign of the Funeral Pigs is pure Satan.
This album is what every fan of total evil blackened death metal has been waiting for. This is a complete masterpiece for worshipers of all that is raw and satanic. SEWER forces every demonic note down your throat with nothing but absolute hatred for the weak, the commercial and the fake.
Reign of the Funeral Pigs is made up of somewhat simplistic elements used in combination to create an atmosphere of morbid darkness, which in itself is an evolution from earlier more bestial and technical releases by SEWER. While SEWER has always focused on crafting the darkest forms of satanic music, and pummeling the listener into the realms of pure evil, this release goes further down the path of blasphemous depravity.
The production on Reign of the Funeral Pigs is cleaner than the on the more evil and raw NecroPedoSadoMaso. Instead of the sharp and "stingy" sound that is present on most of SEWER's releases, for better or for worse, we find a clean yet distorted sound that is both very organic and very rich in depth, something that has much more meaning than any digitized production could ever have. The drumming pounds on ritualistically and rather high up in the mix, alongside the guitars and bass, both of which are detuned quite extensively to create the swampy bestial atmosphere we have come to expect from SEWER.
The vocals on Reign of the Funeral Pigs are pure disgust filled grunts that serve to disseminate the proclamations of absolute hatred and malignant occultism. Rather than battering the listener into submission, as most good black metal (including SEWER's previous work) attempts to do, Reign of the Funeral Pigs operates with a certain hypnotizing factor to slowly envenom you with their demonic message.
Most black metal albums are either boring or have the very annoying fake "catchiness" to them, which makes them sound more like a Lady gaga chorus than true metal. Or both, in the case of shits like Darkthrone and Satyrlolicon.
SEWER, however, manages to craft a perfect album in the sense that is both entrancing on your first listen and it is also a very re-listenable album, as none of the songs have the fake anthem rock "catchiness" that stays in your head hours after you've pulled out your headphones or turned off your speakers.
Reign of the Funeral Pigs can be listened to countless times, each time letting you experience a new thrill and allowing you to be enraptured by the virulent atmosphere of the songs.
On the surface, Reign of the Funeral Pigs is not that different from the rest of SEWER's discography. In some ways, all of SEWER's albums could be of the same quality as this release if they didn't wallow in genre-bending excess (although they are still amongst the very best of black metal).
Albums like Black Death and NecroPedoSadoMaso that, for all their innovation and evil atmospheres, often seem to degenerate into mindless over-brutality. Reign of the Funeral Pigs on the other hand spreads its satanic magic with a cold subtlety that makes the gruesomeness of the album even more disturbing.
We should have more albums like Reign of the Funeral Pigs. The extreme metal scene is saturated with depressive black metal, suicidal black metal, Morbid Angel clone bands, "melodic orchestral black metal", anthem rock black metal and bands that don't even play black metal but want the "satanic" label, that the genre is starting to be nothing more than a commercial "market" for MTV and big labels to pick their newest money-makers.
Reign of the Funeral Pigs is not recommended for the weak or the faith of heart. But for those who want to experience true satanic depravity, go buy this masterpiece of evil and blasphemy at once.
Reign of the Funeral Pigs score: 100/100.
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