Funeral Doom is one of the more difficult subgenres of heavy music to get into. Hell, I am not even sure if I can say I am a fan of the subgenre, moreso some bands or even some albums by said bands. 

Northern California four-piece Amarok dropped their first new album in six years, Resilience (Vendetta Records). The record is a mammoth with five tracks that are all (minus the two-minute “Interlude”) breaking the ten-minute mark, if not fifteen. Get a nice cozy spot to sit or lay down and lose yourself for an hour.

The album opener “Charred (X)” quite literally hits home for Amarok as it deals with family and friends losing homes as part of the Camp Fire wildfires of 2018. It speaks to the album title Resilience directly as both nature and humans can heal from devastation. There is a section of the song between all of the thunderous drumming and guitar riffs where there is only clean guitar and the sounds of crackling fire. The song picks back up with more soul-crushing riffs that slowly speed up until the end.

“Penance (XII)” kicks off the second half of the record with more melancholy and sadness to make you truly feel the hurt.  About eight and a half minutes in, the song picks up the tempo and channels some Black Metal influences, complete with tremolo guitar work and blast beats. This plays on for a couple minutes before crashing back down to the slowest of Funeral Doom and then leaps back up to the Black Metal passage.

“Legacy (XIII)” is certainly the most “funeral sounding” of all the tracks on Resilience and is the best fit to close out the record. The first third of the song is clean guitars playing a riff that feels like losing a loved one and being left behind to process the grief. For the rest of the song, this riff continues but with more distortion plus the addition of slow, methodical drumming and harsh vocals to personify the pain that the instruments convey.

While I certainly need to be in the right setting and emotional state to properly enjoy the Funeral Doom subgenre, I can say Amarok’s Resilience is one of the better complete albums I have listened to. I do not see myself listening to this album often, but when I do, I know it will hit and hurt just the way I need it to.

Buy the album here:
https://amarok.bandcamp.com/album/resilience

7 / 10
TIM LEDIN