Louder Than the Grave

The report

Most bands celebrate longevity with a greatest-hits tour.

Funeral Buffet have spent theirs answering questions from customs officials.

For more than three decades, the doom-metal institution has existed somewhere between musical group, travelling funeral procession and administrative problem. There have been nine line-up changes, cancelled tours, disputed recording sessions, several incidents involving church property and at least one international diplomatic misunderstanding.

Through all of it, three figures have remained at the centre of the darkness: vocalist and guitarist Ezekiel Ash, bassist Magnus Graves and his twin brother, drummer Bartholomew Graves.

Their music has never been particularly interested in cheering anybody up.

Their fans wouldn't have it any other way.

Now, with the forthcoming documentary Funeral Buffet: Behind the Ninth Bell preparing to drag more than thirty years of history into daylight, some of the stranger chapters of the band's career are being examined for the first time.

And there are a lot of chapters.

One of them involves a children's toy.

Before the Ninth Bell

Funeral Buffet emerged with a sound built around enormous guitars, funereal tempos, church bells and Ezekiel Ash's unwavering belief that most songs would benefit from being approximately six minutes longer.

Early performances quickly earned the band a devoted following.

They also earned them complaints.

Neither seemed to bother them particularly.

While members came and went around them, Ash and the Graves twins became the immovable centre of Funeral Buffet. Records appeared when the band felt they were finished rather than when labels wanted them. Interviews became increasingly rare. Songs grew longer.

By the time Funeral Buffet had established themselves as one of doom metal's most uncompromising acts, the band had developed a reputation for treating every album as though civilisation might collapse immediately after its release.

Then came 1998.

And SnugglePals™.

“No pixel escapes eternity.”

— Extract recovered from the case file

The SnugglePals Incident

It remains difficult to explain how it happened.

In 1998, the state-owned toy manufacturer of The Glorious Republic of San Targo was preparing to enter the increasingly lucrative virtual-pet market.

Its answer was SnugglePals™, a pocket-sized electronic companion designed to teach children responsibility through feeding, playing and the constant threat of a small digital animal becoming unhappy.

The San Targan government wanted music for the launch.

Somehow, they chose Funeral Buffet.

According to material featured in Behind the Ninth Bell, officials in San Targo had only encountered the band's name through heavily censored Western radio broadcasts. Somewhere inside the machinery of the Republic's cultural ministry, somebody concluded that “Funeral Buffet” referred to a joyful celebration of life.

Nobody appears to have checked.

Funeral Buffet were subsequently commissioned to write a song about caring for your little friend.

Ezekiel Ash remembers the brief.

“They asked us for something about looking after your little friend…”

The band complied.

Technically.

They wrote about the morning it dies.

The Lamentation of Mr Biscuits

The resulting composition was an eleven-minute funeral-doom epic entitled:

The Lamentation of Mr Biscuits, First of His Name.

Even that was the shortened version.

According to Magnus Graves, the original title was:

The Lamentation of Mr Biscuits, First of His Name, Keeper of Tiny Hearts, Lord of the Plastic Egg, He Who Was Forgotten Beside the Television.

The record company intervened.

The music itself was apparently considered perfectly acceptable.

Featuring three church bells, a sixty-piece choir and the recurring lyric “No pixel escapes eternity,” Funeral Buffet had transformed a children's virtual pet into an eleven-minute meditation on mortality, neglect and the inevitable decay of all things.

Internal market research reached a remarkably diplomatic conclusion.

The composition was deemed “technically impressive” but “unlikely to encourage repeat purchases among children aged six to nine.”

They were correct.

SnugglePals™ sold 143 units nationwide before disappearing from shops.

The toy has since achieved a minor cult following among Funeral Buffet collectors, with surviving examples occasionally appearing online alongside bootlegs, tour shirts and objects sellers insist were once owned by Ezekiel Ash.

Funeral Buffet never received payment for the song.

The people responsible for commissioning it experienced considerably worse.

The Republic Would Like a Word

Following the collapse of SnugglePals™, the entire executive board of the State SnugglePals Corporation was awarded what San Targan authorities described as the Republic's highest civilian honour:

a compulsory audience with Grand Supreme Leader Esteban MonTargo.

None were seen again.

For most bands, accidentally destroying a state-owned toy company in an authoritarian republic would be the strangest part of the story.

For Funeral Buffet, it is merely where the story becomes confusing.

During filming for Behind the Ninth Bell, Ash was asked whether he had ever personally met Grand Supreme Leader Esteban MonTargo.

His answer was unexpectedly casual.

“Oh… aye.”

Ash described MonTargo as a “lovely bloke,” although conceded that he could be stubborn and “terrible at taking criticism.”

More surprisingly, Ash claims the two remained in contact for years.

MonTargo would allegedly telephone around Christmas looking for record recommendations. He was, according to Ash, particularly fond of Motörhead, whom he considered “surprisingly uplifting.”

There is one minor problem.

Official San Targan records state that Esteban MonTargo died peacefully in 2006.

Ezekiel Ash does not appear to believe this.

He still sends MonTargo a Christmas card every year.

More concerningly, he says MonTargo still sends one back.

“He always writes back,” Ash explains in the documentary.

“Lovely handwriting.”

Footage obtained during production includes one such card, addressed to Ezekiel and bearing official San Targan markings. Inside is a brief festive message wishing for the Republic to continue to endure, while beneath the signature sits the unmistakable red stamp of the Ministry of Seasonal Affairs.

Nobody involved in the documentary has offered an explanation.

Funeral Buffet don't appear particularly interested in one.

Still Ringing

It would be easy for the SnugglePals affair to overshadow a lesser band.

Funeral Buffet simply continued.

There were more records. More tours. More members arrived. Others disappeared from sleeve notes. The Graves twins remained virtually indistinguishable to interviewers. Ezekiel continued writing songs apparently intended to make medieval cathedrals nervous.

And somewhere along the way, Funeral Buffet stopped merely surviving and became permanent.

Their sprawling retrospective ELEGIES (1988–2012) documents only part of that journey: songs including Black Altar, Ego Tenebris, Lord of Bones, Yesterday I Buried Myself, By My Father’s Grave and, inevitably, The Ninth Bell.

The latter has now lent its name to what may become the definitive account of the band.

Or at least the closest anyone is likely to get.

Behind the Ninth Bell

The forthcoming documentary Funeral Buffet: Behind the Ninth Bell opens Funeral Buffet's archives to tell the story of a band that has spent more than thirty years operating according to its own peculiar internal logic.

Rare footage, archive material and new interviews with Ash and the Graves twins revisit the music, the personnel changes and the stories that accumulated around them.

The SnugglePals controversy is only one.

The documentary's promotional material promises something considerably larger: a journey through the strange mythology that has grown around Funeral Buffet and an attempt to separate what actually happened from what the band merely remembers happening.

That may prove difficult.

Even the documentary's investigation into SnugglePals ends not with an answer, but with a Christmas card apparently sent by a man who, according to the government of San Targo, has been dead for twenty years.

Perhaps that is the problem with trying to document Funeral Buffet.

Eventually, you have to decide which questions you would rather leave unanswered.

Thirty years.

Nine line-up changes.

One catastrophically misjudged children's toy.

One apparently deceased dictator who remains unusually diligent with his Christmas correspondence.

And somewhere in the darkness, the bell is still ringing.

Funeral Buffet: Behind the Ninth Bell — coming soon.