Austin, Texas based experimental blackened post metallers FUNERBLOOM proved their willingness to explore and experiment with the genre far more than most of their contemporaries with their great debut “Petals” (2014) and massive 2-track follow-up “The Romance of Crime & Your Beautiful Bones” (2017) [go here to see the accompanying video], and now they’ve produced a new split with the likeminded act from Moscow, Russia, the IDIOTEQ-featured bleak experimental screamo act TOLUCA! The FUNERALBLOOM’s side of this split features their rendition of “Love Like Blood” by KILLING JOKE, in which they continue to push boundaries and blur the lines between many contrary genres, while TOLUCA match their black metal infused foundation with their condensed hymn, nodding to dark screamo origins, and making this unique pairing an incredible and emotional listening experience.
We have teamed up with both bands to learn a bit more about the record, its artwork and future plans.
The TOLUCA / FUNERALBLOOM split is out now on Spotify, Bandcamp, and other streaming services.
How did you come across one another?
FUNERALBLOOM: May be wrong about this, but I believe it may have been four or so years ago when Toluca reached out to us. A few of use in the band knew about them through Bandcamp, and they knew about us form a previous band we were all in.
TOLUCA: Let’s talk about The Measure Of (old name of Funeralbloom). First time I heard them in 2013, when they release song “Is Nothing Sacred” and in my mind come idea – we need to do split with that guys, they stuning cool and near with us in post-black sound.
In the end of may 2013 – we have changes in members of Toluca and we drop idea about split. I contact with guys only in the end of 2013 and give deal about split. They write back, that they take new name “Funeralbloom” and working at full-lenght album.
Fast forward to 19.07.2017 I write to Nicolas again: “So…3 years passed and I have same deal about split. What u think about that?” and we start our brainstorm :)
What’s the meaning behind the cover art?
FUNERALBLOOM: The artist who did our album art is Rodrigo Serna. We were thinking something like a broken crown could work and be a middle ground between Toluca’s song our our cover. Could work with the themes of each song. Wanted something that symbolized power and a broken type of power. Rodrigo then worked in some ornamental flowers into the crown to symbolize Funeralbloom and some more oily type effects to symbolize Toluca.
Tell us a bit about your contribution track, the story behind it, its lyrical content, etc.
FUNERALBLOOM: For our cover, its’ a band and song we have liked. We are influenced by a lot of 80s post punk and have thought the content of this song worked for our aesthetic and were interested in adapting it more into our sound.
TOLUCA: We still call our songs of the demons of Goetia and we lead the story in the text from the first or from the third person, taking the image of the above-described demon as something internal, inherent in man. If in brief “Orobas” – song about pulsing inner voice talks about mistakes in self-knowledge.
Ok, so what are your future plans?
FUNERALBLOOM: We have been talking about a full length, but need to find the time to write it. We live in different cities now and are contributing to the band as more of an online audio/visual project right now.
TOLUCA: We’re working on our new full-lenght album. We’re planning on releasing it sometime in the spring of 2019.
We continue to playing shows in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, but we open for any suggestions across the world ;)
