This was the last Funerary Call album to feature the band's horror-soundtrack/abyssal deathmarch industrial style, as after this the music began descending into more abstract, droneological depths on albums like Dark Waters Stirred and our own Fragments From The Aethyr release. Originally released on The Fossil Dungeon, this is one of my fave discs of Funerary Call's black orchestral ambience. I'm still a huge fan of this period of Funerary Call's work, and it doesn't really sound quite like any other band out there. You can definitely hear a connection to the death industrial sounds of the Cold Meat crowd and the darkest edges of ambient music circa 2004, but there's a monstrousness to the heavier, more percussive-based music that really made this stand out. Now re-mastered and with new artwork, this 2012 reissue of Beckoning also features the previously unreleased bonus track "Plague March".

The music shifts between the crushing martial percussion and hellish horns/strings/howls that drive the void-incantation of opener "Unto The End We Call" (as with much of Funerary Call's output from this period, its very reminiscent of what Gnaw Their Tongues would start doing a few years later) and the minimal black soundtracks of "Black Art" (which features chilling piano dissonance and vague smears of ghastly whispering that later blooms into some fantastic John Carpenter-esque synth-drift) to eerie dark ambient tracks like the grim orchestral score "Of Death's Breath" and "Hel's Hymn" with it's demonic mutterings, vast subterranean thrumming and dreamy flute sounds. One of my favorite tracks on Beckoning is the distorted war-march "Hill Of Skull And Bone", which throbs with the relentless power of an amplified kettledrum and a squadron of deeply menacing trumpets while a wall of seething electronics glows luminous in the background.

Another highlight is the title track, which brings us the sound of French horns and other woodwinds heaving beneath low, guttural voices, the music looping hypnotically as drums begin pounding in circular motion - a real ritualistic feel to that one. Closer "Plague March" couldn't be more aptly titled; those thunderous, pounding drums are at the forefront of this song as well, as are those majestic war-horns and trumpets, lowing deep over the processional march.

Recommended to all navigators of the nightmare realms.