Holy Shit! This album is fucking evil. Seriously, The Funeral Pyre knows how to create some sick tunes. I love how their riffs have the tendency to dig and crawl underneath your skin. I swear every time I play these guys on my stereo, I feel as if a portal to hell is surrounding me and at any second I can be engulfed in Lucifer’s eternal flames.

Vultures at Dawn is almost an exact copy of Wounds, except with some minor adjustments. They also venture deep into sludge territory as well. On this album I like how they got rid of that annoying kick sound they had on their last album. Even though I love Wounds to death, that kick just didn’t sound right. The newly improved vocals are what sold me on this album though. Their downright disgusting and really filthy, I mean it sounds like this man actually eats glass or something that cuts up his throat. Seriously when you hear this man scream, you will shit your pants. Does anyone else almost fall into a trance-like daze when you’re listening to this band? Because it makes one wonder if these guys record their music with Satan, in the deepest bowels of the unholy land. It’s just I feel like they have some mind control powers or something, hell maybe Professor Xavier is in the band to.

Opener “Vultures” sets the tone for the album. After a short intro of eerie bells and guitar feedback, the band kicks into full gear and the blasting begins. It isn’t until “Monolith” where the band takes their first foray into sludge domain. A seven minute monster of a song, it’s slow and foreboding sound just seeps pure evil. That is until one hears the vocals because the opening scream is nuts. Also the bluesy solo at the end came out of nowhere. It’s moments like this in black metal that give me the chills. The experimentation that leads to places outside the realm of one specific style is what keeps one’s faith in a genre filled to the brim with a million other same sounding bands.

The rest of the album, from the cold and majestic “Blistered Hands” to the crushing yet depressing “Clarity of Time.” The Funeral Pyre shows us all that black metal is here to stay. With that being said Vultures at Dawn is another masterpiece added to their already astonishing collection.

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