There is only one way to describe Runemagick: Slow Death Metal. They have the usual death metal elements, from the guitar sound to the guttural vocals, but they aren’t fast. Yes, many death metal bands incorporate slow but crushing melodies, but for most of those bands, that is just a slight change of pace they experiment with once in a while. The only other death metal band that I can think of that fits the slow death metal tag is Bolt Thrower, as all their albums since ‘Warmaster’ have been rather slow in comparison. Luckily, like Bolt Thrower, Runemagick is really good at what they do.

Here, Runemagick have returned in 2004 with their seventh album, ‘On Funeral Wings.’ In my mind, this is one of the better death metal albums of the year, a very solid effort. The intro, “Monolithic Death,” is great, really setting the mood for the following 70 minutes of pure-no-bullshit death metal. “Dragon of Doom” is a fantastic nine minute epic-like death metal masterpiece. The title track is a great slab of death metal. “Ocean Demon” and “The Doomsday Scythe” are probably the best songs off the album. “In a Darkened Tomb” has an oddly catchy rhythm to it. “Black Star Abyss” is a haunting and weird eight minute instrumental that goes right into the album closer. All of the songs have a really cool driving force behind them, using several different riffs, making this album fairly unique. This is a hard album to review, as the songs are hard to describe for someone with a small vocabulary like me, but that doesn’t mean shit. This is a really good album. The biggest problem that I see, though, is that replay value is small. This isn’t really an album I can listen to over and over again. Not necessarily a bad thing for someone with as big a music collection as myself, but still, I like albums that have replay value, and this one just doesn’t seem to cut it.

The playing and interaction of the members is very tight and pure. The production really fits the whole feel of the music. Not too raw to lose it’s integrity, but not too clean to make people cry blasphemy. When it comes down to it, this is one of the best death metal albums of 2004. If you like their previous output, this will not disappoint. If you haven’t heard them before, or like death metal material similar to Bolt Thrower’s later output, this is an album you must check out.

[This review was first published on the now defunct scandinavianmetal.info webzine]