This #FeatureFriday we have Void by Vanessa Funke from the first track ‘Void’ takes you on an emotional journey. There’s a difficult beauty in pain even if it is too hot to hold at times, too big to carry, too hard to penetrate, too painful to tolerate but this music shows a strength and will to go on. It’s ok to feel crushed by burden, it’s ok to feel broken but broken ca be fixed. It can. We hold on for those moments and music like this is where we find community. It lets you know you are not alone.
To create music like this is a release but it takes a deep soul to put this out there and bravery. It’s ok to feel alone but it’s also ok to mourn that loneliness and it feels like these recordings put that out there. It hits hard, like a punch to the solar plexus. Musically it manages to sit in that feeling. Not push it away but embrace it and say the quiet things loud.
As a solo production it’s impressive. It knows when to be heavy when needed but it’s the subdued moments that give the heavy parts life and purpose. The arrangements and performances sell these recordings. Give them life. The guitar work is right in the pocket, never overly flash or showy just pure melodic playing.
‘Blood On My Hands’ in particular really hits hard. If you have time start here. I’m not going to say too much but be prepared.
I’ll be honest, this affected me quite a lot and I’m glad I listened and hope that you will too.
Sometimes, on rare occasions, you find music that seems to be written just for you; that speaks to you on a fundamental level. This is what happened to me when I heard “Void” for the first time nearly a year ago. Vanessa Funke combined elements of several musical genres in this album: NeoFolk, Black- and melodic DeathMetal, Blues, just to name the few that I can easily identify. She does so with so much care and delicacy, that the result feels cohesive, both in a stylistic and in an emotional way.
Emotion is the key to this work in general. “Void” is about loss, loneliness and a sensation of emptiness. The lyrics speak about hopes and dreams colliding with reality and about processing said emotions. At times, there is a clash between the music and the lyrical content, most notably in the song “The Funeral”. Here, the music has an energetic, even hopeful sound while the words talk about losing and remembering a loved person.
Choices like that throughout the entire album give it an enormous emotional weight, feeling bitter-sweet, deeply honest and human. This contrast is represented wonderfully by Vanessa’s light, aspirated singing voice and her throaty screams, as well as her choice of arrangement. Delicate piano playing gives way to blast beats and down-tuned guitars, before opening up for melodic solos.
The production walks the fine line between providing a certain raw, fuzzy sound, while being clear enough to hear intricacies, even if the vocals at times get drowned out by the instrumentation. Overall, this is an album I can not recommend enough. It has easily been the one I’ve listened to the most in the past year and I am sure I will listen to it a lot more in the future.
A one-woman multi-instrumentalist out of Germany, Vanessa Funke has made a name for herself by venturing into murky, boundaryless sonic landscapes, exploring the limits of melodic death metal through forays with progressive, gothic, and neofolk textures. However, her newest album, “Void,” represents a regeneration of structure and heaviness, that in her own words, focuses on cultivating atmosphere and feeling and returns to the roots of her symphonically-minded blackened death sound. Functioning, then, as a unique synthesis of her growth as an artist, “Void” deftly navigates its emotional odyssey through dense, thoughtful passages.
Funke describes the record as “a pensive but impassioned exploration of emptiness,” a project who’s “compositionally dense yet melodically resonant” craftsmanship is immediately apparent from the first track. This virtuosic epiphany is within reach..
The Nirvana Fallacy (or, Mania and Her Sophomore Slump) – Saint Louie