«Funerary Rites of Ancient Doom» is a split album that brings together two acts of dark underground sound with a shared sense of ruin but a different way of building it: Nekus from Marburg in Germany, who play blackened death/doom, and Bloodsoaked Necrovoid, who started out in Costa Rica and are now based in north-eastern Spain.
Country: Germany / Spain
Genre: Blackened death/doom, death/doom metal
For fans of: Grave Upheaval, Abyssal, Astriferous
The Nekus side is a single track, «Dakhma», running around 19 minutes. It is essentially the continuation of the sound of 2024’s «Death Apophenia», except that here the band unfolds its material across a series of movements that grow steadily slower, more doom and more disorienting. Monastic chants, hoarse vocals and a huge growl at the centre fill the track, while the core ideas keep transforming. The result is not a pile of random passages, but something that builds a memory and returns to it.
Bloodsoaked Necrovoid, on the other hand, work across three tracks, with the weight falling more clearly on the riff. «The Unreachable Exaltation of Consumption» keeps the sense that the song could collapse at any moment, with slow and unstable hits, until around the third minute it opens into a brief monstrous burst. The closer, «A Respite From the Swallowing of Existence», leans on more purely doom tempos and lets the riffs hover instead of pushing constantly forward, without ever losing the filthy atmosphere that defines the act.
The difference between the two sides is exactly what makes the split stand: both bands sound threatening, but they do not sound alike. Nekus build tension through length and confusion, while Bloodsoaked Necrovoid trust the power of the riff more. The cover art is by MFAXII.
Our take
Not a few splits get bought for one side and forgotten on the other. Here the opposite happens: both contributions have substance, with Nekus proving they can keep interest alive across a long track and Bloodsoaked Necrovoid reminding us why they are counted among the best death/doom names of recent years. The album does not read as a rushed stopgap, but as a complete, carefully put-together package.
See also
diSEMBOWELMENT – Transcendence into the Peripheral · Astriferous – Atavistic Unraveling.
