PALLBEARER
Mind Burns Alive (Nuclear Blast)
Arkansas fellows Pallbearer gained their doom metal bona fides initially by playing the style as true and trad as they could, which can be more of a niche pursuit in the scene than you might think. Evidently, it didn’t satisfy them eternally though, and following a shift towards gleaming melodies and prog rock-like grandeur on previous releases, Pallbearer’s fifth album Mind Burns Alive collects a wider range of touchstones and fashions them into a distinctive, affecting sound.
The six songs on this record are generally long – between six and 11 minutes – and built of many parts without feeling overly maximalist. Some of it is stout, denim-hearted epic doom along the lines of Pallbearer’s first two albums: With Disease certainly, Endless Place for the first two-thirds until an honest-to-goodness saxophone solo transforms the whole picture.
Conversely, the folk-rock guitar and clean vocal approach of Brett Campbell on Where The Light Fades is like REM if they played half as fast and twice as loud. There’s a faint but unmistakable element of dub production on the title track and as pivots to ‘Low, but an 80s power ballad band’ go, 40 Watt Sun might have done it first but Signals finds Pallbearer nailing it more comprehensively, and even more earnestly.
words NOEL GARDNER
