Wounds is the latest album from FVNERALS, a Glaswegian outfit combining doom, post-rock, shoegaze and dark ambience into one succinct and ambient sound. It’s a decent enough album, but is perhaps best described as a bit of a slow-burner that will take a little while to fully get into – it’s not exactly one of the most accessible albums out there.
There’s a great darkness and ‘mugginess’ to the music that gives it more of a mysterious and ethereal feeling, with the haunting vocals adding even more ambience to it but due to the nature of the delivery of the album as a whole, it feels all too easy for it to just blend into the background and it’s a little difficult to connect and engage with the music as a result.
However, it is worth sticking with Wounds because although it may not demand your attention, it’s certainly worthy of it. A good example of this is fifth track Crown – whilst on the outside it may sound fairly simplistic, dig a little deeper and the emotive vocal performance coupled with the sparse guitars will surely send shivers down your spine.
As a whole, Wounds is pretty good. It’s not necessarily an album that will appeal to the masses, but somehow I don’t think FVNERALS were aiming for that in the first place.
7/10
