FATHER BEFOULED “Crowned In Veneficum”

By Dr. Abner Mality

FATHER BEFOULED have been crawling around the cryptic back alleys of death metal for a good many years now. With “Crowned In Veneficum”, they may have reached their peak. One thing’s for certain: these boys love their INCANTATION. Honestly, I would be hard put to tell any of these songs from INCANTATION, so closely do they resemble each other. Well, I don’t think FB make any secret of it, so let’s judge things strictly on that basis.

Everything has the proper sepulchral sound. The guitar is down tuned, morbid and gooey sounding, the corpse vomiting vocals are super guttural in Pilliard/McEntee fashion and yes, to use the over-used term, things sound very “cavernous”. The mix between fast and slow is just about perfect and much like with INCANTATION themselves, I find the slower, doomier riffs stick in the head more. The album ending “Utter Abomination” is a great example of morbid death/doom. But there’s lots of remorseless hammering as well...”Unheavenly Catechesis” is chaotic in AUTOPSY fashion, bristling with screaming guitar solos. Incidentally, the INCANTATION influence is obvious even in the song titles with their fifty dollar words and blasphemous meanings.

The album flows well (like the river Styx) and is exactly the right length for music such as this. We’ve established that FATHER BEFOULED is not much in the originality field, but brother, when you get smashed in the mouth by tracks like “Miasmas of Sodom”, you’re not gonna care much. This does just what it set out to do.

EVERLASTING SPEW RECORDS

FATHER BEFOULED