Arkansas doom practitioners Pallbearer set the bar impossibly high with 2012's masterpiece Sorrow and Extinction. The record garnered attention from nearly all corners of the heavy music world and firmly planted the band among the modern doom metal staples. Sorrow... was and is a timeless album that will maintain its value for decades. With expectations soaring high, Pallbearer returned to the table with Foundations of Burden, which is effectively a sequel to Sorrow... in both sound and execution.
Artwork: The overall feel of Foundations... is reminiscent of the early Castlevania games, which is actually what drew me to this record. The image is simple in its meaning but beautifully complex in its execution, and it almost looks like the map screen of Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse. This blend horror, fantasy and surrealism was a sucker punch to my "buy this record" button.
Structure: Foundations... flows through the same vein as its predecessor, featuring a handful of slowly developing dirge-like songs, averaging about ten minutes apiece. The length of these tracks may be intimidating, but each one flows like a slowly winding river, taking the listener gently by the hand on an awe-inspiring journey through a wilderness of emotion and rhythm. "Ashes" is the only track that falls distinctly outside the doom metal genre, featuring a piano and a quiet but emotionally-charged vocal backed by a beautiful string arrangement.
Sound: The most notable feature of Pallbearer is the melodious voice of its frontman Brett Campbell, which sets Pallbearer apart from a sizable majority of doom metal bands. Thick, chunky guitars create dense walls of beautiful chords and slow metal riffs throughout the album, but the sense is never given that Foundations... wants to raise your heart rate or excite you with speed or harshness or flashy performances. Every section of this album is heartfelt and real. Tonally, there are few standout sections offered here; Pallbearer seldom veers from their slow churn, but rhythmically, Pallbearer creates some intimately engaging head-nodding passages that stretch and morph into entire songs, grabbing the listener, again, by the hand gently and letting them coast through this whirlwind of beautifully slow riffage and tribal rhythms. The one and only flaw I feel exists in this record is that some of the guitar harmonies seem thrown together (see beginning of "Watcher In The Dark"), as they don't always... harmonize. It works, in a way, but in another way, it doesn't, and this happens throughout the record, which is why this is a 9/10 record and not a 10/10.
*Note: The video below is absolutely worth your time!
Lyrics: Pallbearer brings a surprisingly mixed bag of observations of the positive and negative aspects of the human condition. Existing in the "doom metal" spectrum sets a band under an assumed umbrella of negativity or hopeless, but on Foundations... Pallbearer creates many parallels that both create interesting imagery and prod the listener to question the meaning behind the verses. The opening passage "Without light, the dark encloses all..." is followed by "Without dark, the light burns out our eyes..." setting the stage for a record about comparisons and things being out of balance. The opening track ends with some beautiful verse: "I'm reaching out / Across frayed tapestry of lives / Eroding worlds / Cut through unraveled cords of time / Within this rift / Where lays our heart of hearts defined / My darkness and your light, still yet remain entwined."
For Fans Of: Mourning Cloak, Thou, The Body
Favorite Lyrics: "Endless and obscured
The watcher in the dark
In the sea of illusion
A voyage to beyond, within"
Favorite Track: Watcher In The Dark
- Worlds Apart
- Foundations
- Watcher In The Dark
- The Ghost I Used To Be
- Ashes
- Vanished
Rating: 9 / 10
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Keep it decent.