What’s the result when the DNA of Black Sabbath is crossed with 80’s post-hardcore and punk? Texas trio Funeral Horse, who play a doom punk fusion, heavy on the doom. Their new album, Psalms for the Mourning, will be released this weekend, so today we’ve partnered up with the Texans to debut the video for “Emperor of All Maladies,” which will be on that album.
“I wrote a lot of notes for the lyrics of ‘Emperor of All Maladies’ as the song is about a very close and loved friend who passed away from hepatic cancer,” singer/guitarist Paul Bearer says. “In the early stages, the song was originally called ‘The Final Path of Doom’ with the lyrics focusing on the lament of having life snatched away by this aggressive cancer. I had just finished reading the book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, and this gave me even more material for the song. But after a while, I decided to rewrite the song with the lyrics coming from the perspective of the cancer itself, not of the victim. Lyrically, it’s about cancer explaining itself and its purpose to the victim. This change in perspective fit with much of the other material on the album, so it stuck.
“Musically, the song goes through a lot of stages… similar to the stages of grief…. and it’s one of our most prog-type songs so far. It took us three sessions to get the whole song recorded where we liked it.”
Psalms for the Mourning is available to pre-order from Artificial Head.
