Vardan - ...Dreaming ...Living My Funeral
Moribund Records
Depressive Black Metal
4 songs (39'21")
Release year: 2013
Reviewed by Alex

First of all, I am glad that after some break I am hearing back from Moribund Records. Always in the mood to find out what Moribund considers quality in black metal. From the medium size pile which hit my desk with the latest Moribund delivery I picked one-man Italian outfit Vardan, the title of the album … Dreaming … Living My Funeral being the most intriguing.

The first hunch was correct and the black&white cover art coupled with the aforementioned title anticipated depressive black metal Vardan offers. All familiar elements are here: the twangy bleak guitar tone, long repeating parts dominating the songwriting process, the soul curdling screams processed beyond ability to recognize these were made by a human. The fans of Xasthur, early Blut Aus Nord, Lustre, Krohm, Celestia and Woods of Desolation ought to be flocking to Vardan, who has been toiling around for a decade now.

Familiar approach or not, … Dreaming … Living My Funeral achieves its not-shared personal goals. One can only guess what moves Vardan in his music creation, but driving guitar melodies of the opener Living My Funeral from mid-way on just savage with desolation. Unlike others, the drumming (machine or not) is more assertive with Vardan, and the music does have more in its bottom end adding weightiness in parts. The simple, easy to follow melodies of Wandering Spirit thus float over the hungry step-like riffs. Throughout the album, Vardan also to tends to shift from one part of the composition to another rather abruptly, so that background tremolo and jangly up front guitar in Cold Way to Exist yield way to more acoustic and cleaner sounding second half. The same can be said about Wandering Spirit as well, the closings of both cuts ranging from cosmic devastation (Wandering Spirit) to meandering, dissolving daydream on Cold Way to Exist. It is actually often that I had this feeling on … Dreaming … Living My Funeral that you can just sit nearby with this depressive music, it does not impinge on your own thoughts drifting away, allowing for both your personal thought process and Vardan’s grim coldness to co-exist. It is interesting then how the two do congeal into one sad resonance, or maybe it was just the tough week I was having when listening to Vardan.

His goal to deliver misery fully achieved on … Dreaming … Living My Funeral, Vardan has been productive, another album appearing on Moribund in early 2014.

Killing Songs :
Living My Funeral
Alex quoted 75 / 100
Other albums by Vardan that we have reviewed:
Vardan - Nostalgia - Archive of Failures - Part 4 reviewed by Alex and quoted 79 / 100
Vardan - The Woods is my Coffin reviewed by Goat and quoted 65 / 100
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