Ah, another release from my favourite ‘located behind a restaurant’ label. Gentle jokes aside Transcending Obscurity seem to have a knack for finding quality and producing it so I thought I’d have a listen to Newcastle’s Live Burial who though knowing of I’d never cocked an ear to.
Right from the off of the opening track ‘Despair Of The Lost Self’ there is a lovely (!) old school feel to the hanging intro melody and the drop into the chug as a guitar wails mournfully over the top. The vocals kickstart the speed and we’re off into guttural battery and eerie melody put of old Celtic Frost territory. It really rattles your brain to perfection and the tempo changes keep you wide awake.
‘The Ordeal Of Purification’ has a slower start to it before breaking into mid pace. Despite the old school vibes (Frost, Autopsy) there is a definite modern streak here just in the way the parts fit together and, I must say, a refreshing confidence too. The lead break here is great, a little noodling in a death metal style and a great rhythm section keeping it all driving in the back ground. I can see why there’s been a little buzz hereabouts.
Its most definitely a slice of class is this. ‘Exhumation And Execution’ as a good example grows and develops with style into a slow burning number with real fluidity and style. The guys have a real feel of unity here, and that assurance lets them shake things up, peer down dark hallways and bring back strange melodies and adventurous arrangements without being anything but the fine death metal band they promise. There’s a touch of first two albums Paradise Lost somehow, perhaps the echoing, cavernous vocals or the grim, bleak lyrics (yay for a label who sends those with the promo pack!), but its spine is death and its vision is forwards.
I even think that, perhaps, with ‘This Prison I Call Flesh’ they leave the best to last. A sprawling and disconcerting eleven-minute track that never lets go. The bass moments are great, the almost constant rumble of the drums seems to darken everything and the most bleak of melodies from some dank catacomb keeps haunting me.
Live Burial have, on this their third album since 2016, produced a compelling and exemplary album of heavily old school influenced but still fresh death metal with a suitably grim and downbeat atmosphere. Worthy of the buzz.
Very cool indeed guys. Very cool
(8/10 Gizmo)
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