I rarely get to talk about music from Japan, especially in the genres I normally cover. In fact, those few bands dedicated to extreme genres that I had the opportunity to listen to never impressed me much, so I approached this work of Funeral Moth with little conviction. As often (and fortunately) happens, I had to reconsider since the interpretation of funeral doom provided by the Japanese band is quite convincing and competent. The quartet has been active for about a decade, but his first long-distance step dates back to two years ago (Dense Fog): Transience is the first release without one of the two founding members, bassist Nobuyuki Sentou, which leaves the reins in the hands of only Makoto Fujishima, guitarist, vocalist and, what is not insignificant, owner of Weird Truth, label specializing in doom that sees in its roster names like Ataraxie, Mournful Congregation, Profetus and Worship, among others. The current style of Funeral Moth is close to that of the German Worship, so we are talking about a very dry and essential form of funeral doom and the gait for the most part bradycardic, but in this case the sound is even more rarefied, often leaving minimal contributions of individual instruments to guide the development of the two long songs that go to make up Transience. The band from Tokyo perhaps indulges too much on this aspect of its proposal, since the vocal contribution of Fujishima, endowed with a very good and intelligible growl, is however rather park and this makes the whole even more static than what normally we can expect from a funeral doom record but, at the same time, it never lacks that sense of inescapable tragedy that commonly hides behind every single note of an album catalogued within the genre. That said, Transience is still a well-made album that lacks only the ability to evoke those emotional vibrations that, in the works of bands such as the aforementioned Worship or the same Mournful Congregation, are exhibited with greater continuity, two songs like the title track and Lost, in the end, are an appreciable listen for those who have a certain familiarity with these sounds, less for those who prefer the more melodic and atmospheric side of funeral.

2016 – Weird Truth Productions / Throne Records / Dogma Artistic Guerrilla