Well, it may not be the actual full-length, but it's better then nothing. The Vultures at Dawn Radio Sampler has been made available to the press, and if this is the best that the band has to offer for their fourth full-length outing, then the full-length version of Vultures at Dawn is going to be a rather dismal release, in both atmosphere, as well as reception. By this EP, it appears that for this release, The Funeral Pyre has decided to change things up a little bit as far as the music they perform goes, bringing in a very Drone atmosphere to the mix. Unfortunately, where the music featured here seems to drone, is where the upcoming release is feared to be dull.
The full-length Vultures at Dawn release will feature eight songs, whereas this sampler only features three, and you would assume it to be the best three off the release. While the latter two tracks "Personal Exile" and "To Watch the Earth Rot" are alright, the first track on this sampler really tips the scales in a bad way. "Monolith" is essentially just a droning, slow paced Black Metal song that seems to go on forever with no end in sight, even when the song has ended! This seven and a half minute track grows boring after the first two because of the lack of anything of interest. The music on it is dull and feels like the band just chose some random notes and played them really slow in hoping to meet an invisible time requirement for a full-length effort. It also doesn't set any sort of mood, leaving the listener just absolutely frustrated.
And then comes the better tracks, which really isn't saying much. Vultures at Dawn is going to be quite a dramatic departure from the band's previous material, as there's practically nothing original, just stale generic Black Metal riffs played with what feels like little to no real energy. The production quality on it is a little more raw then usual, but that doesn't help either since the vocals are so far in the background and really the only thing of interest, but even those sound very monotone at times. The vocals are also the only thing that really saves "Monolith" from being a repetitive Hell for the listener, as well as the guitar solo at the very end. "Personal Exile" does feature some of their newly found Doom/droning aspects for a little while at the start of the song, almost like a tribal or ritual sound with the drumming, which helps the song a bit, as do the blast beats that come and the faster guitar work, but there's more droning aspects that appear through the song and it really just makes the track sound overall generic after a while.
If this EP is any warning of things to come, then brace yourselves. The material on this EP simply is not all that inspiring, or even all that entertaining. It's great to find the band experimenting, but the experiment they give us seems flawed with only stand out moments on the songs instead of whole songs that really stand out and get the listener's blood pumping from start to finish, and that's really sad considering the talent this band does possesses. Let's just hope it's because these three tracks happen to be taken out of sequence or something along those lines, and the full-length will fill the gap between them.
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