Along with Doomed, Funeral was another project spun off by members of Autopsy back in the 90s, but this one never even managed to release anything during their brief run. This eponymous collection on Aphelion is the first time that the recorded output of Funeral has ever been officially released, and while the band is little more than a footnote in the history of Autopsy and West Coast death metal, this stuff is actually pretty goddamn ripping, definitely worth checking out if you're a fan of obscure early 90s prog-death. I'd been wanting to hear these recordings ever since realizing that mighty bass virtuoso Steve DiGiorgio (also of Death / Sadus / Control Denied fame) had played in the band, and it's definitely one of the more compositionally adventurous projects to come from this crew; it featured DiGiorgio playing alongside Autopsy band mate Eric Cutler, and even features some killer sleeve art from Autopsy's Chris Reifert, who furnishes the album with some great gruesome psychedelic cartoon art and the band's killer caveman bone logo.

     These guys were only around for a minute back in the 90s, recording only one demo tape and an instrumental rehearsal in 1996 before they split up. It's killer stuff, though, as these guys burped up some great wonky deathdoom, mixing that signature sludgy Autopsy style with some weird, almost prog-informed bass playing, lots of discordant guitar shred, and a heavy dose of fucked-up chordal dissonance; the latter gives a vaguely Gorgutsian vibe to certain parts of the band's demo, blended with the passages of eerie, cavernous doom and contorted slo-mo riffery. The vocals are a guttural, demonic muttering that actually sounds like they might have been played back at the wrong speed, spewing out a variety of morbid visions, and the recording itself has a weird sparseness that contributes to its off-kilter vibe. While these guys weren't doing anything too outr� here, Funeral's demo did stick out from the other projects that the Autopsy guys were involved with, with more of an offbeat progginess that I really dig. These guys could thrash too, with songs like "Mourning" offsetting their crawling deathdoom with bursts of raucous Sadus-esque violence, and even the faster material features more of DiGiorgio's awesome, fusion-influenced fretless bass playing. The other four tracks on the disc come from a pro-recorded rehearsal session the band did later in 1996 - it's all instrumental and is sans DiGiorgio, and it gets a little rough on one track with some tape garble and dropouts, but it's still an interesting listen for fans of the demo, made up of all new material that showed the band moving into even slower and more miserable depths of doomdeath dementia. Includes a booklet loaded with lyrics, liner notes, photos, and artwork.