This latest offering from Mike Ford (black metal loudmouth turned pseudo-ambient artist) really shouldn't have been released under the name Black Funeral - Michael can try to justify it, saying that this still carries the same audio essence as the older material, but I can't help but think there are other factors involved here. Black Funeral *were* a black metal band (good or bad depending on your own personal taste), but this is not a black metal album (as I'm sure most of you have heard by now) - gone is the dirty, raw, gritty black metal, and in it's place were given some ritualistic ambient soundscapes that aren't very different from the work Mike has done under the Valefor name - a bit more Coil influenced, a lot less power-electronics based. And as far as this type of thing goes, it's actually pretty good. It's not ground breaking in the way early Coil and Current 93 were, but it's at least on par with what a lot of others in this area are doing now, albeit not quite as sophisticated as some who have been churning out this type of thing for close to two decades now. Most of the songs are built up around slow moving passages, Shanna LeJeune's (ultra-babe of the highest order and now Mike Ford free I hear) "moaned" (for lack of a better word - but they aren't riddled with the type of sexual connotation this may have implied) vocals, and a hell of a lot of your typical furnace/wind noises that make up a lot of "deep" ambient (although some songs do feature programmed drums, and these are the tracks that most heavily resemble Coil (circa "Scatology" and earlier). There really isn't much more to say about this - if you're looking for anything that remotely resembles old Black Funeral, stay away from this - but if you're one of those who knows Mike from his post-Funeral antics, this is probably right up your alley. Of course, if you're a fan of both styles, then the question is : would you rather see a picture of a very large skinhead in corpsepaint and a ridiculously over-sized upside down crucifix dangling in front of his Isengard shirt, or would you rather see a picture of the ever lovely Shanna and her beautifully pouty bee-stung lips ? I thought so...

© 2000 chorazaim