The Funeral March of the Marionettes - It All Falls Apart
From Rockford, Illinois (USA), gothic rock / post-punk band The Funeral March commemorate the life and legacy of their late founder and bandleader, Joe Whiteaker (b.21 October 1968, d. 17 May 2024), with their final release, It All Falls Apart: released today (Friday, 14 March 2025).
The poignant new video for the album’s title track and lead single, ‘It All Falls Apart’, meanwhile premiered via Post-punk.com on Monday, 10 March 2025: the first of two video singles from the album. These music videos are the last time Joe Whiteaker would be captured on film.
Tragically, Joe lost his battle with pancreatic cancer in May of 2024, shortly after completing what would be the band’s final studio recordings. Bassist and longtime friend, Darius McCaskey, who has since taken on the task of bringing Whiteaker and The Funeral March’s final musical statement to release, says:
“I’d like people to know how proud Joe was of this record. We had a great time recording what would become It All Falls Apart with William Faith in 2023, before Joe was diagnosed with cancer, and he was able to hear the final mixes before he passed away. Joe didn’t have a specific theme in mind – each song was written independently, some even several years ago – but as tracks were selected and refined, this idea of things and people breaking down and falling apart emerged.”
The Funeral March of the Marionettes – more often simply ‘The Funeral March’ – originated in Rockford, Illinois in 1987, drawing inspiration from seminal English acts like Bowie, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, and Joy Division. The band’s name, meanwhile, was a nod to Charles Gounod’s ‘Funeral March of a Marionette’; best known as the theme music for TV’s Alfred Hitchcock Presents. During this first phase of the band’s career, The Funeral March was active from their first gig in August 1987, until the mid-1990s, as Whiteaker later explained:
“I looked up, and I was the only original member left, and after many years of fits and starts, when it all fell apart again, I decided it was time to leave it to slumber in its crypt... dreaming the blood red dreams of madness.”
Intermittently reactivated during the early 2000s, another long hiatus followed from 2007. Finally, in 2017, Joe felt that the band’s thirtieth anniversary was the right time to resurrect the project in earnest, and released their long overdue debut, The Raven EP: a remastered collection of unearthed recordings from the band’s early years. Revitalized by a new cast of revolving members, The Funeral March would go on to record and release a string of new EPs: Resurgence (2018), Solace (2020), Flood (2021), and the widely praised Persephone (2023) – with several standalone singles bridging the gaps between them – before entering the studio in 2023 to record what would become their final release, It All Falls Apart.
While there have been many incarnations of the lineup over the years, Whiteaker was joined in The Funeral March by guitarist Wayne Thiele in 2020, and bassist Darius McCaskey in 2021. This trio recorded It All Falls Apart together with producer William Faith at 13 Studio in Chicago. The band is also joined on the album by guest contributors Ria Aursjoen of Octavian Winters and AURSJΦEN on additional vocals; Rob Hyman of [melter] on drums; and Renard Platine on Bass VI. In the final live iteration of the group, meanwhile, Joe Whiteaker and Darius McCaskey were joined by guitarist Jeff Goins, and drummer Joel DeLuna. Rounding the recordings out to the band’s first album-length release, It All Falls Apart also features remixes from Tweaker, BELLHEAD, and The Joy Thieves: in effect, creating a compilation album of two EPs.
