Swedish pioneers of Doom Metal, Funeral, have released a surprise EP, Funereal. The single “Gamalt ljós”, is out now, an 18-minute centerpiece that reflects on “the psychological toll of emotional entrapment.” Anders Eek, the band’s founding member, drummer and leader since 1991, feels that the band has suffered its own tragedies and that the “death and loss we had to go through over the years were extremely painful yet inspiring, as a musician and as a human being.”
The band went through several labels over the years, only to see them bust soon afterwards and were plagued by recurrent line-up problems. They even lost two of their key members, Einar André Fredriksen (bass) and Christian Loos (guitar), in 2003 and 2006, respectively, to suicide and overdose.
They have continued to release albums over the years, but after the band most recent performance in Antwerpen on February 3, 2018, “life got in the way” as Anders puts it.
He says:
Some of us had kids, others moved out. Even I had quite a lot of things going on in my personal life and, at least for a while, maybe less drive to keep on carrying on the weight of the band on my shoulders. I never stopped writing music though because it’s something I’ve always done anyway. But there were less things happening you know. During that nine-year gap, I could have written ten albums but I only wrote two ah!
Funeral have a new album coming up, Praesentialis in Aeternum, which means something along the line of “here eternally”, and for the first time ever, not only are the new music’s lyrics fully in Norwegian but they were also written by an outside collaborator, a “personal friend” of Anders who happens to be a psychologist.
Anders says:
He’s both a close friend and a fan of the band. So, he knows exactly how I roll and what the band is all about. I knew he was writing on the side so one day about five years ago, I asked him as a joke almost ‘hey, why don’t you write lyrics for my band instead?’ and within five months, he did! His lyrics are more or less his take on philosopher Emmanuel Kant’s work. Initially, I thought about maybe translating them to English, but it would have meant redoing them so in the end, we choose to keep them as they were. The booklet will include a little text explaining what they’re all about for those who don’t speak Norwegian.
Since the album was completed, the now septet has welcomed for the first time ever a full-time violin player “to perform live most of the strings you can hear on our albums as soon as we’ll be able to go back on stage.” Anders confesses the next album is more or less “finished.”
He adds:
Praesentialis could have been released earlier if we hadn’t to face all those COVID-related problems. We couldn’t meet in person, let alone rehearse or even just take promo pictures… But now we have a new label, a new line-up and a totally renewed sense of energy so why stop there? FUNERAL started thirty years ago be truth be told, it’s never been stronger. So, doom on!
