Band:	Frowning
Album:	Funeral Impressions
Style:	Funeral doom metal
Release date:	December 2014

01. Intro
02. Obsessed
03. Receive My Tears
04. Day In Black
05. Sleep Eternally
06. Murdered By Grief
07. A Way Into Relief

Quick! A gloomy, black and white album cover, and the album has "funeral" in its title. Can you guess the style?

If you guessed "power metal," we apologize, but the answer we were looking for in our Metal Categories For $2,000 was actually funeral doom. Val Atra Niteris, the mastermind behind the one man project of Frowning, chose to drop Funeral Impressions, the debut of his bleak and and brooding baby, late last year. As could be expected, the music is dark, melancholic, and mournful. With slow moving, heavy-as-Jupiter riffs, the occasionally more melodic moments that cast a heightened sense of sorrow onto the album, and Val's deep cookie monster growls, Funeral Impressions demonstrates exactly how funeral doom is typically composed quite well.

However, that's exactly the problem with the album: that it feels like too much of a replica of what has come before it. The music at work here is not necessarily bad, but for the most part it's nothing that hasn't already been done. Val has got the funeral doom formula pretty down to a T here, but there are very few senses of climax, and many of the riffs seem to lumber into monotony just for the sake of doing so, without ever really rewarding the listener with a higher enhancement of mood. Occasionally we see the use of some interesting choir-like effects here and there, but this something that has already been well-tackled by bands such as Skepticism and Elysian Blaze. And, quite frankly, they execute it a lot better. "Day In Black" is unquestionably the track with the most potential here, due to its impressive guitar lead (uncommon for the style) towards its end. Unfortunately however, this technique is pretty much confined purely to this track, and I for one really wish Val had worked more on it, for it could've given the guitar a much more interesting personality on the album when compared against the other instruments.

Considering that Frowning is a one man band, I found myself considerably disappointed with Funeral Impressions in the fact that Val doesn't appear to be utilizing the creative leeway that comes with one to its full potential. The music is thankfully not terrible, but it certainly isn't all that it could be either, and in a strange way that actually makes the album more disappointing, because rather than saying "it's shit" and leaving it at that, we're instead stuck with this sense of "it could've been so much better." For someone who can't get enough of funeral doom and its sinister and despairing atmospheres, I'd say go for it with this one. For those just getting into it, however, stick to the big names for now.

Maybe you'll be more impressed?