Wilfully one dimensional is how I’d describe a lot of funeral doom. Yes, there is potential genius in tracks that have a tendency to repeat themselves over and over for 10 minutes at a time, but also potential for lack of genius to run amok and ruin everything. So it’s good to find bands with the skill to stay true to the Herculean heaviness and dreadful solemnity of the sound while forcing open those leaden boundaries. Urna’s last album, Inter Ad Lucem, was a largely overlooked gem of the genre. Each track edges forward at a glacial pace but which actually allows the band’s mastermind Marco Z more time to crystallise his ideas rather than, as many other bands in the genre do, leaving wide open voids of white space filled only with reverberating bass and hanging notes. Four-and-a-half years on, and Mors Principium Est is repeating the trick – throwing all the classic elements that you would want from a funeral doom album into the pot while adding some nourishing flesh to those otherwise skeletal, wizened bones.
Urna’s self-released debut Justa Funebria holds the key to the band’s sound, knitting together slices of black metal, gothic doom and ambient keyboards. As enjoyable as that was, it was also a fairly straightforward experience compared with later efforts. With each release the sound has matured and the influences combined into something more complex before we arrive here. Perhaps it’s the black metal influences that really help invigorate the sound into a broader experience – the need to pull in more esoteric elements and the need to experiment and push boundaries on an individual level rather than steadfastly remaining on a restricted linear path well-trodden by others.
After a couple of solid tracks deeply rooted funeral doom and a now familiar, short, Intermezzo instrumental break, things start to grind into motion with Octo Sunt Grados Ad Càpere Fine Cycli Magni (or ‘There are eight steps to catch the great cycle’) which uses deeply layered, lush keyboards and arrangements that begin to betray Urna’s more avant-garde tendencies. The track begins to push as much into post-black metal and more ambient, psychedelic territories as much as funeral doom. While Urna keeps its feet rooted firmly in the trudging plod it begins to break the mould more comprehensively on the numerically named “137 = 73 + 64” with larger doses of black metal before the Urna signature really unleashes on the final track Fui Sum Ero. Good to see too that other funeral doom genre-leader Esoteric taking part with Greg Chandler making a guest appearance.
Mors Principium Est takes a while to warm up and it’s not until the second-half of the album that it really begins to show its hand. But, then again, it would be a bit naive to wander into this genre and expect fireworks from the outset. Let’s be honest, if you haven’t got an hour here and there to digest a band like this an album at a time, you probably need to be considering other genres of metal. For those with the patience to sit back and enjoy the journey, Urna will show the way in a genre otherwise largely boxed in by its own colossal, self-constructed walls.
(8/10 Reverend Darkstanley)
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