Funereal - The Misery Season (2000)

   After Contagion disbanded, they returned as Funereal with some line-up change, and a full-lenght album, that introduced a far more progressed band than what was familiar for the underground audience under the name of Contagion.
   Instead of the simple, raw old school themes a high quality production could be heard on "The Misery Season". It's definitely the work of well experienced musicians. The album starts quite intense and includes strong death/doom influences too at the end. Their music became diverse compared to the old times, and both because of the excellent, well composed themes and the wider perspective. The intense, old school death metal features staying dominant, so "The Misery Season" still has the feeling of the early '90s, but leads further already the same time. It's somewhere between the modern and old school sound of death metal. Their style reminds more to those Northern bands who started with death metal in the early '90s, played already a bit more complex music than most bands that time, and soon changed their style (like old Tiamat or Sentenced for instance). "The Misery Season" also proved that high quality didn't disappear completely from this genre.