With a new deal in place with Ardua Music, Marche Funèbre are ready to unveil their fifth full length album, After The Storm
Belgian doom metal titans Marche Funébre are set to release their fifth full-length album, “After The Storm”. Since their formation in 2008, the band has carved out a niche in the world of heavy, atmospheric metal. The latest is a darkly divine collection.
“After The Storm” features six tracks of melancholic, demanding heaviness. The album opens with “In A Haze”, (single out now) setting the tone through Marche Funébre’s signature sound. It showcases Arne Vandenhoeck’s masterfully balanced clean vocals with gutteral, dark death metal growls, building that dynamic and heavy-hearted reflection.
With roots in the thick and heavy, Marche Funébre’s music transcends the genre’s typical boundaries as it weaves an enchanting tapestry of sound that is both crushing and beautiful. Their compositions are a study in contrasts, where thunderous riffs and rhythms coexist with moments of haunting melody and ethereal ambiance. With inspiration right out of the old style of Katatonia and Paradise Lost, the music creates a spellbinding atmosphere where melancholy and majesty intertwine. These guys have the ability to craft expansive, emotionally resonant soundscapes within the context of extreme metal, and it’s hypnotic. Every song unfolds like a trip through twilight realms, with layers of instrumentation and vocal interplay. It’s this atmospheric richness that elevates Marche Funébre’s music from mere heaviness to a captivating and immersive experience.
Elevar had the opportunity to catch up with Kurt, guitarist for Marche Funèbre, who shared some insights into the band’s creative process and latest work.
Creating a song can be pretty personally visionary. I listened to In A Haze; darkly beautiful way of expressing one of the oldest paradigms of heartbreak. It balances vulnerability with intense metal in an almost perfect, natural way. Has your music ever helped you discover something about yourself you didn’t realize before?
As a musician, you are constantly expressing yourself in a creative way, and by doing that, you are continuously growing and evolving. For me personally, being a part of Marche Funèbre since the beginning, has been a journey on different levels.
As a relatively inexperienced guitar player at that time, I struggled with my technical capabilities and the impact this has on the musical creative process and how we write music in general.
More importantly, Marche Funèbre has had a consistent line-up, so the band becomes more than just a band. Besides my own family, I don’t see anyone more often than my brothers in MF. You just build a solid relationship and friendship. And while this is a major asset in the band, it can also be difficult when you are faced with differing opinions on musical or management topics. Nonetheless, we always have managed to find a way to work out disputes.
There’s a paradoxical soothing quality to your music. How has your appreciation for the doom metal genre evolved since you first started playing it?
Definitely. When we first started out with MF, we all appreciated doom metal, but none of us were doomheads in a way that we knew the genre inside out. This obviously changed when we started out and you can hear this influence on the first albums for sure on the parts where we dug deep into the doom and gloom.
What is really appealing to the genre however, is the community around it. In the sixteen years that we have been active, we have met A LOT of people in the doom scene and it has always been great. More and more when we play live (especially abroad), it feels like coming home when you meet up with other bands that you have connected with before.
Have you guys thought about coming to the US again?
We’d love to. Our tour on the west coast has been absolutely stunning and one of the highlights of the band! I am sure I can speak for any one of the band if I say we’d take the opportunity to go back when it presents itself. How much we love to write new music, on stage is where we are at our best.
You can get a taste of the new album by listening to the new single “In A Haze”:
The album’s production, handled by renowned metal producer Martin Furia (known for his work with Destruction, Nervosa, and Toxik), is polished and appropriately heavy. “After The Storm” is currently available for preorder at a reduced price until August 16th.
Preorder After The Storm Right Here
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