ALBUM REVIEW: Superstition – Funeral Chic

FUNERAL CHIC are a band that have, since they formed in Charlotte, North Carolina in 2014, produced some world class blackened punk. It’s a genre that is very hard to get right, and this five piece have managed to nail it from their very first EP. After their debut album, Hatred Swarm, was released in 2016 to great acclaim, FUNERAL CHIC have gone from strength to strength. The follow up to that record, Superstition, trims the fat significantly and tightens their sound to create a great and impressive record that stands as a late candidate for album of the year.

Rotten To The Core is a harsh, raw and aggressive opener that acts as a statement of intent for the rest of the music to come. With its sharp, black metal tones and punk undercurrent, it is a cacophonous and intense piece of music driven by grating guitar hooks, powerful drumming and visceral, venom soaked vocals. It’s a great way to kick this album off, and with it FUNERAL CHIC set the bar high straight away.

Superstition, the title track, continues in a very similar vein, with some incredibly caustic, vicious black metal with robust, crusty rhythms. It’s a brief yet brutal slab of punky black metal, with some excellent, hard rock inspired guitar work that helps to provide plenty of awesome licks throughout this song. Left Alone, with its thunderous drums and discordant guitars, is a chaotic and vile sounding track that manages to maintain a level of speed driven, blistering ferocity from the first note to the last. The shrill vocals, coupled with the wall of noise quality of the sound, make for a bestial, emotive performance that it’s hard not to appreciate immediately.

Jump, the albums fourth song, is a short sharp shock of tight, crushing guitars, scatter-brained drumming patterns and genuinely fierce vocals that are imbued with a darkness and sense of urgency that really adds a lot of this track. It leaps out of the speakers at such a pace that it is more akin to old school grindcore, with that ever present black metal edge helping to give this song a level of bleakness that provides a tinge of melancholy to the extremity on offer. Baptized is another relatively short affair, clocking in at just over a minute and a quarter. This is mid tempo, hard rock centred affair, with some authoritative Punk beats and dense, beefy guitars. Despite it’s reduced speed, it’s nonetheless a vicious piece of music throughout.

Deep Pockets is another slower track that makes great use of thick, chugging guitar motifs and crashing, sparse drums, which allows the vocals to really come to the fore, an acidic snarl backed by a rhythmic aural assault. It’s an impressive track, and it shows that FUNERAL CHIC are capable of producing some truly powerful and vicious music without having to rely on a whirlwind of fast and furious musicianship. Off The Rails lives up to its name, with some of the most intense and energetic performances on the whole album being condensed into its two and a half minute span. It’s a burst of razor sharp riffs, blasting primal percussion and bilious, beastly vocal patterns, which have a palpable, electric energy to them that helps to bring the music to life and grab the listeners attention straight away, not letting up until the final notes have died away.

Decorated ratchets up the intensity even further, with a frenetic and visceral rage driving this song throughout, with the vocals in particular being one of the focal points on this slab of bestial, dirty sounding song. The drumming here is also insanely intricate, and manages to inject plenty of vicious power into the proceedings. It’s a great piece of music, and one of the stand out offerings on the whole record. Stay Useless is a solid track that has more than a slight air of death metal to it, and at points is very evocative of ENTOMBED, with a solid groove and powerful drums, with some arid, hideous vocals adding a dense and dark note to add to the intensity on offer. Suffer Together Forever follows on in a similar vein, with crashing, chaotic drums creating a vicious backdrop for some harsh and slick guitar hooks that slide between robust chords and juddering, disjointed melodic flourishes. It’s so incredibly fast at points that it feels as though it is about to lose control, before suddenly decreasing the pace drastically for a more expansive sound.

Red Laces, by far and away the longest song on the album at just over four minutes, moves at a relative funereal crawl when compared to the rest of the album, with thick, chugging rhythmic sections characterised by a dense, slimy bass line, primal drumming and sharp, full guitars, is a bleak, fierce and oppressively heavy offering, which, with a far slower pace, allows all of the elements on this track to come to the for more easily. There’s little in the way of riffs on display here, however, and it’s a shame that FUNERAL CHIC weren’t able to make more use of the longer song in order to inject plenty of memorable moments into the music.

Say No, yet another slow and sharp offering, possesses some of the thickest, most vicious guitar parts on the whole record, with a guitar solo towards the end of the song providing plenty of dark swagger to the proceedings. The drumming is steady, but monolithic, and there’s plenty of truly arid, tortured vocals that help to fill out the already vast and expansive sound. D.R.E.A.M is a return to this albums more rabid and demented side, with the speed once again shifting up a few gears, without fully discarding of the more mid-paced parts altogether. Jumping between cacophonous, fast motifs, far slower ones and a haunting, sepulchral snails pace as it reaches its final moments, it’s a song that starts off strong out of the gate, and begins to gradually lessen it’s pace before coming to a grinding halt at the songs closing moments, a technique that helps to keep this song varied and interesting throughout. Fantasy is one last frenetic, energetic and bestial slab of violence that blends all of FUNERAL CHIC‘s key elements in, from black metal to crust punk to old school death metal, making for a really eclectic and fierce closing effort that helps to bring this album to a close in a blaze of ferocious drums, caustic guitars and dirty, dark vocals. It’s a great way to end the album, and leaves the listener wanting to hear even more.

This is a full on, powerful and vicious album from start to finish, with the speed, energy and intensity rarely dying down at any single point on this record. The balance between the black metal and crust punk sides of FUNERAL CHIC‘s sound work incredibly well, with no one aspect taking over and dominating the sound to an excessive degree. There’s also a nice amount of old school death metal liberally peppered throughout this record, which adds plenty of solid and great riffs into the mix, which helps to create a well rounded and impressive record. This is an album that could very well help to catapult these guys into a much more prominent place within the extreme metal scene, and help gain them fans the world over. How they will top this album is anyone’s guess, but they have set themselves a high standard to overcome, and if they continue producing music like this, they are more than capable of creating something as good, if not even better.

Rating: 9/10

Superstition is out now via Prosthetic Records. 

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