Rose Funeral

The Resting Sonata

Written by: PP on 12/02/2009 12:21:29

The station list for the freight train known as deathcore has been in constant revision ever since Job For A Cowboy made it huge and sold tens of thousands of records with a monstrously heavy sound that still had enough groove and stickiness to it to appeal for a wider audience than the death metal bands do. The newest stop is Metal Blade's Rose Funeral, who play deathcore with a capital D from start to finish on their sophomore album "The Resting Sonata", which contains zero surprises during its 42 minute running time.

On the vocal department, Rose Funeral trust in a duel between the guttural death metal growl and the devilish black metal shriek you've grown accustomed to from bands like Skeletonwitch. Neither works particularly well on the record, as the shrieks sound too contrived and vocal-chord tearing for my liking, and the deep-lung growls just don't sound good in any context, if you disagree, you probably need to get your ears checked (who prefers that hollow shit over powerful growling, seriously?). There's a few breakdowns on every track in between death metal influenced serpentine riffs and the technical wizardry typical to deathcore. That's all good and well on the Job For A Cowboy record, but Rose Funeral fail to combine the approach with memorable songwriting, resulting in the listener feeling like "okay there are some cool verse parts here and there" before wondering things like "why is there a breakdown there? That makes no sense". That's the entire album in a nutshell for you, no need to go into more detail.

So while "The Resting Sonata" isn't a terribly album by any means, it is a generic and an all-too safe-bet in a genre that's quickly becoming saturated and stagnated as no progress is being made beyond the breakdowns-in-death metal formula. If you already hated deathcore to start out with, Rose Funeral will be your exhibit A when arguing your point, and even if you find the genre in your favorable list, you'll still be hard pressed to put the record on instead of something by Crowpath, Job For A Cowboy and the likes.

Download: Sodomizer
For the fans of: Job For A Cowboy, White Chapel, The Black Dahlia Murder
Listen: Myspace

Release date 20.01.2009
Metal Blade

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