Although Funerary Call formed way back in the early 90s, it wasn't until relatively recently that we started to see regular output from this influential Canadian black industrial project. Headed by Harlow Macfarlane (who also records less ambient, more bombastic industrial music under the Sistrenatus banner), Funerary Call has produced a couple of amazing albums just in the past two years that have come out on the Fall Of Nature imprint. Dark Waters Stirred featured all new material, and it's as horrific and nightmarish as FC's early 7-inch releases. Skin-crawling subdued ambience creeps out of black crevasses and across desolate orchestral strains, and blasts of blackened metallic heaviness rumble through the depths; listening to this, you have to wonder if Funerary Call had had some sort of influence on the music of Gnaw Their Tongues.

There are six tracks, beginning with the title track which starts the album with a heavy, blown-out bass dirge crawling through shimmering shattered cymbals and wailing feedback, while eerie violins and deep gasping breath heave in the background, immediately hurtling the album into a cavernous and thoroughly dismal atmosphere. The next song combines slowly pounding kettledrum rhythms with streaks of feedback and violin, cellos and distant cymbals/gongs, deep rumbling bass-heavy synths roaring in the distance alongside wailing horns and monastic chants in the distance.

It's with "Miasma" that things get seriously evil and crushing. At first, there's just mysterious creaking sounds amid a rush of cacophonic feedback and noise, but it builds with swirling distortion and huge swells of distorted guitar (contributed by Ryan F�rster, aka Deathlord from the notorious black metal bands Blasphemy and Conqueror) that flow through the track's entire eight minute length. It evokes the feeling of being trapped in the hull of an ancient schooner adrift on waves of black sludge and howling irradiated winds while guttural demonic squeals and bestial snarling can be heard right outside the door, like the squealing of pigs in an abattoir combined with the chants of a black mass. Like a vastly blacker and more evil Sunn O))), this infernal, psychedelic industrial doomscape has actual drums come in towards the end, bashing out a slo mo doom-laden beat that's stretched apart beneath pulsating black drones.

The last three tracks return to the more atmospheric ambience. Troy Southgate from the neo-classical band HERR contributes spoken word recitations from the book of Revelations on "Equestrian Seals", his voice riding on waves of orchestral ambience and crackling hiss, looped strings and rumbling keyboards, far off French horns and high pitched droning feedback. Then the distant boom of kettledrums appears, met with metallic drones and harsh metal abuse, scraping, rustling noises in the foreground among the crash and rumble of sheet metal, the track finally exploding into a fury of harsh noise. And the closer "Crown Of Iron" ends the disc with an epic black dronescape.

Highly recommended for fans of Gnaw Their Tongues, T.O.M.B., Aderlating, MZ.412, Deadwood, Tenhornedbeast, and other lurkers within the black industrial abyss.