This final release from the Rockford, Illinois-based post-punkers The Funeral March (aka The Funeral March of The Marionettes) arrives with a bitter-sweet taste. While it is a gorgeous blend of post-punk sonics and gothic atmospherics, it was also recorded shortly before the death of their founder and frontman Joe Whiteaker last year. As dedications go, it is a superb sonic tribute to him. (All proceeds from the track go to his family.)
This, the title track to their recent ep, is a deft blend of post-punk sonic attitudes, taking in the chill of Joy Division at their most drifting and understated, the dark accessibility and gloomscaping of Seventeen Seconds era The Cure and the glacial crawl of Bauhaus at their finest. Pace and poise rule over volume and velocity.
This more considered speed of delivery is balanced by the sonic weight of the music, the busy, skittering drums, the guitars, which blend raw abrasiveness and shimmering, ice-cold sonic shards, and the depth-charge bass, which is the bridge between the two.
They say that you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep. If the same can be said of bands, then with William Faith on production duties and contributions from Ria Aursjoen from Octavian Winters, and [melter]’s Rob Hyman, they undoubtedly move in all the right circles.
The end of an era? Perhaps. But as one door closes….
