GiggySound

From out of Little Rock, Arkansas, there comes an increasingly revered doom metal quartet, a band who triggered the metal underground abuzz with praise over the last few years for their debut album Sorrow and Extinction. When members of Baroness declare a group their “favourite doom metal band”, it’s wise to pay attention. That band is Pallbearer and they have just released their second album, Foundations of Burden.

With ‘Worlds Apart’, Pallbearer lead off like an all-star cleanup hitter, smashing it out of the park with riffs exploding with emotion. To say the album is not traditional as far as metal goes — which some previews felt the need to express — really does require a history lesson. The self-conscious efforts of so many pundits to distance themselves from the genre bear little connection to the evidence given the barriers that have been broken down by the many laudable trailblazers and the attraction their work obviously creates, in spite of metal’s faults of the past and the idiotic forehead-slapping behaviours of a slice of the demographic. There is plenty here that stems from a foundation of the very best metal across decades and it’s to Pallbearer’s great benefit and credit to carry the torch to such wonderful heights.

So, as one the best metal bands of the present, Pallbearer are undeniably distinctive. Wearing their hearts on their riffs (as opposed to simply teabagging everyone to death), there is smoothness to the doom that avoids that sense of pastiche that is so pervasive in metal. Without bearing even the slightest resemblance to the blues that is characteristic of so much Sabbath-inspired American heavy music, they create all of the natural flow of the cleverest slow hand of the South in each of the album’s songs. Like Agalloch, there is a connection to the European — dare I say Swedish — roots of the genre, but with flawlessly evolving compositions proving something those across the Atlantic barely ever managed.

Most of the tracks are around the ten-minute mark, never feeling overly drawn out by ensuring that each passage is a distillation of Pallbearer’s very best. The second half of ‘The Watcher In the Dark’ is a magnificent highlight, showcasing just how elevating doom metal can be for the spirit. It is, perhaps, in the band’s strength with melody that the temptation exists to separate Pallbearer from the rest of metal, which ignores the great skill and undoubted influence that the Scandinavians have contributed to the doom metal genre over the past two decades. Pallbearer’s gift for crafting layers of melody to achieve their intensity on Foundations of Burden will leave you speechless. The songs are set free from the staple production values of a heavy record. It’s not that it hasn’t been done before, just so rarely this well. ‘Ashes’ must be one of the most transcendental moments of beauty a metal band has pulled off in recent times. Eat your heart out and ask for seconds, Neige.

‘The Ghost I Used To Be’ begins as though it has been transported straight from one of the golden ages of doom metal, standing easily alongside the best from early Paradise Lost and Katatonia’s Dance of December Souls. Fans of this era will be forgiven for breaking down in tears and hugging the speakers as though reunited with a dear friend thought forever lost. Brett Campbell’s vocals are sensational, like glistening sheets of the aurora borealis over a glacial landscape of heartfelt yet pulverizing guitars.

Profound Lore Records released Foundations of Burden on August 19. Whilst their debut was certainly a great effort, this new work sends Pallbearer hurtling into the echelon of heavy divinity. Don’t waste another second waiting to get the finest doom metal album released this year.