Exequiae [CD]

On their third album, Exequiae, (Latin for "funeral rites"), Lone Wanderer make a striking statement in the realm of Funeral Doom. The band's High Roller debut continues the thematic line of it's predecessor The Faustian Winter. The tracks - including the nearly 25-minute centerpiece "To Rest Eternally" - combine majestic slowness, dense harmonies, and overwhelming heaviness. The artwork, in keeping with the quartet's tradition, is by Romantic painter Ernst Ferdinand Oehme, whose Procession in the Fog captures the album's grave stillness. Exequiae is a funeral mass in slow motion - majestic, despairing, uncompromising - and stands as the band's most compelling statement to date, treating Funeral Doom as a true art form.