Death Metal Tuesday - Children of the Scorn

One of Finland's earliest DM exports was Funebre, who produced just this 1991 full length before vanishing into obscurity. The early Finnish stuff is pretty damn cool as it carries obvious influences from the developing Swedish scene, along with east coast American DM. 

Funebre are fairly derivative, but at the same time, they're rather ambitious. Their songs are dynamic with tons of changes and plenty of good riffs to go around. Their drummer is constantly mixing things up and keeping the songs interesting. The key deviation from the more standard Swedish offerings, is their technical prowess and progressive songwriting. Listen to the broken tempos at the onset of "Congenital Defeat," or the triplet mashing in "Shiver." The openning moments of "Waiting for Arrival" are pretty kickass too, when the guitars drop out and the drums remain alone. They jam a lot more riffs into a song than many of the other bands at the time - there is a bunch to discover in this album in other words. It demands repeated listens. 

Children of the Scorn is one of those hidden gems from DM's history that could easily go overlooked. The vocals are a tad generic and the production is a bit thin, but they satisfy every old school craving I can think of. The only caution would be the technicality probably makes this album a little but less instantly accessible than a lot of other 91 releases, but that can be a good thing too. 4 out of 5.