Funeral Age - Fistful of Christ

Back in 1997, a band called Suicide Culture formed.  Under that name, the members of Suicide Culture melted the faces of Seattle metal heads until they decided it was time for a change.  Thus, Funeral Age was born!  Officially changing its name in 2003, Funeral Age began a reign of destruction over their home city.  Featuring only 3 members with only one still in the band today, Fistful of Christ is a testament to the older work of Suicide Culture while adding more black metal infused riffs.  Starting the madness off with a solid, running bass intro, the men of Funeral Age waste no time jumping into the metal.  Within seconds, a crushing guitar riff kicks off and they tear into the first track (that isn't a small instrumental,) Fistful of Christ.  From then on, Funeral Age delivers an absolutely devastating mix of death metal drumming and blackened death metal riffs throughout the whole album.
In every song, the guitar work is what sticks out the most.  From impressive shredding solos to dominating and powerful riffs, Funeral Age really sticks out in terms of technicality.  There is not a track on this album that lacks in impressive guitar work which is hard to say for a lot of albums.  The guitar work seems to sound like later-age Dissection when they turned a bit away from black metal and added some death metal elements into their music.  The bassist also gets quite a few chances to shine through and really show off his talent as well.  The intro to the album features the bass, something quite rare for death metal.  Towards the end of the album, there is an instrumental section that is only guitar and bass.  While somewhat out of place, the instrumental work on it is quite good.  The drumming is very good for this type of music.  Too often do you hear death metal bands revolving mainly around blast beats and after a while, the music starts to sound bland and uninteresting.  Here, the kick drum is utilized to really drive the music forward more than the snare and cymbals.  The fills are extremely impressive and precise.  The drummer is extremely talented with his hands and has incredible dexterity when it comes to creating extremely fast and technical patterns.  The vocals are an interesting piece of this album.  There is a hint of Pantera-esque vocals in the first few tracks, but also some hints towards Insahn's style in the later parts of the album.  This might just be me, but there seem to be a lot of black metal influences at play here.
Honestly, I am not one to like death metal very often.  Fistful of Christ is an album I have found myself constantly coming back to for more because of its sheer energy.  It is pure testosterone-fueled metal, giving the listener a great rush of adrenaline.  The instrumental track, Requiem of the Condemned seems a little out of place and doesn't keep the high intensity feeling of the other tracks going.  That being said, this is definitely an album to check out for anyone looking to bang their head and pump their fist!

9/10

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