Published: September 25, 2020 

Things must be pretty grim in Belgium. The small nation known primarily for it's chocolate and a certain mustachioed detective has spent the last few years pumping out quality Doom Metal (Amenra, Thurisaz as well as newcomers Voidian) as if it's very waffles depended on it. So it'll be interesting to see how Einderlicht the 4th album from Marche Funebre stacks up against the crowd. Straight off the bat the band are following the template that made their previous album (2017's Into The Arms Of Darkness) such a success, taking the same blend of blackened-death metal, mixed with some catchier, chuggier doom riffs, while the vocals switch between tortured growls and Candlemass-esque theatrical crooning. 

The similarities don't stop at a surface level either, Markus Stock is once again at the helm of production, even the cover art is from the same photographer (a haunting shot by Brooke Shaden). The band have certainly stuck with the old axiom “If it ain't broke....” Unfortunately, the tracks on display this time around don't quite match up to the bar set by their last releases. With an average running length of 7-10 minutes, the 6 tracks on offer here have an unfortunate habit of outstaying their welcome slightly. Tracks such as the opener, The Eye Of The End, aren't quite ferocious enough to press a listeners extreme metal buttons, but are also too midtempo and frenetic to settle into a hypnotic doomy haze. 

Ultimately this leaves portions of record at times sounding a bit uninspired and “metal-by-numbers” (The Maelstrom Mute featuring a natural harmonic riff that sounds like a latter-day Machine Head offcut). It's not all gloom and doom though as the closing portion of the album, particularly the title track, offer up something a lot more dynamic and interesting. This latter half of the album shows the band defining their death/doom metal formula much more successfully, living up to the albums translated title of “a light at the end”.