9th July 2025

Review: “Rumour of a Funeral” by Mosara

Despite technically being formed in 2005 it would be another fourteen long years before Phoenix Arizona atavistic Doom veterans Mosara finally committed their first cryptic writings to tape, releasing a two track demo in November 2019. As if making up for lost time with a loved one the four piece comprising guitarist and vocalist Tony Gallegos (Enirva, Twingiant) drummer John Quin (Authority Zero, Secrets of Lost Empires), guitarist Nikos Michas (Twingiant, Mizery) and as of 2021 bassist Christopher Burns (Hex Volt, Bright Sunshine) would go on to hammer out two critically acclaimed albums, two stand alone singles and an EP in the next five years. That’s prolific by anyone’s standards but given their chosen colour palate of fifty shades of grey on a easel of Sludge fuelled Doom Metal, its especially with the usually glacial pace that other bands in the genre operate. Studio album number three was self recorded, mixed and mastered at Pachanga Studios in the bands home city of Phoenix, Arizona over a year between 2024-2025…

Anyone who knows Mosara and especially their 2022 sophomore album “Only The Dead Know Our Secrets“ will tell you that size matters and this band don’t do things by halves, so while there maybe only four cuts on this record, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Those four cuts run to nearly forty minutes of music with the longest one clocking in at over fourteen minutes. The album begins almost monolithically with the title track “Rumour of a Funeral“, a cut soaked in low, slow and distorted riffs fit for worship that reverberate around the skull in glorious fashion. There is almost a jam room vibe to this exploration of sonic destruction, as if it were all recorded live on the floor of the rehearsal space. This beast doesn’t roar, it rumbles without compromise, using fleeting leads to enhance a deep rooted sense of melancholia. The drums actually sound surprisingly clean, something that helps in the expanses of instrumental passages between few and far between vocals.

You might know the lore from the Wishmaster horror film series but for those who don’t, a “Djinn” is a supernatural being in pre-Islamic Arabian and Islamic mythology. Having the ability to shapeshift to manifest in human or animal forms they can be either good or evil, sometimes granting wishes and sometimes causing havoc makes them an interesting choice for a Doom Metal song but perhaps not a surprising one as Mosara have discussed such things before on “Magissa“. Here on the longest cut of the record, the four piece take their time to make their mark building the mountain from dust, one piece of rubble at a time. The guitars gently weep for three minutes before the vocals rise from the abyss, once again partially buried in the mix but their power remains as the bleak and haunting lyrical narrative about chasing shadows in the dark unfolds. There is something of a false ending too as the band offer up a moment of respite in melody before a gloriously warm solo before a final, wretched verse of unfiltered raw emotion.

Crawling out from under the sheer sonic weight of the previous cut “Somewhere” is sonic food for the soul. A melancholic solo in the first half is wrapped around thick riffs played by calloused hands that feels like Mosara are dragging the lake looking for bodies. Its the final third however that throws up the biggest surprise with almost tribal drum fills accompanying the chant of “somewhere to nowhere!” as the tempo increases with a sense of tension to match the burning intensity. A scorcher of a track that might just slip under the radar, this one is the metaphorical single cube of ice in your glass of single malt, the piece that makes all the difference. Remember the elevator door scene in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining? “Rivers of Blood” has those vibes about it with another gear change for forty seconds of faster riffing and that drifts into a fleeting yet warm solo. The sinister atmospheric is a thing of dark beauty, edging towards unsettling without quite reaching that point. As powerful as anything Mosara have previously done, “Rumour of a Funeral” will leave your ears ringing by its final moments [7.5/10]

Track Listing