Pallbearer - Mind Burns Alive (2024)^{Release ID: 51993}

I feel I need to recalibrate my approach to Pallbearer. Since their imperious debut, Sorrow and Extinction, they have moved further away from that album's massively crushing and melancholy doom metal in a more gentle, doomgaze-y direction that has found me becoming increasingly disappointed with the results. Mind Burns Alive continues that direction of travel and it is now apparent that the days of Sorrow and Extinction are well in the band's rearview mirror.

Firstly, the production has a light touch, without doom metal's usual focus on the bottom end and with a clear, clean sound that enhances the gentler material, but which, lightens the doom riffs when they hit, preventing them from attaining the overwhelming crushing weight which is most often the point of focus for doom acts. Songwriting-wise, it seems that Pallbearer are steering in a more post-metal direction, achieved by incorporating influences from 1990's and early 2000's alternative rock. A track such as "Signals", for example, has a very alt-rock intro, bringing to mind bands like Radiohead or REM and even when the doom riff kicks in, it feels as much like the heavier alternative or noise rock bands of the turn of the century as it does doom metal. It must be said though that Brett Campbell has the perfect voice for this style, his reedy and nasal delivery is very much suited to that particular alternative rock sound and feels just as much at home with the gentler material as it does the heavier.

I have a feeling that Pallbearer may be taking a leaf out of Patrick Walker's book and taking an emotionally redolent version of doom metal such as Walker perfected on Watching From A Distance and moving in a shoegazey, alternative direction, similar to 40 Watt Sun. As I said at the beginning, I think a reappraisal of Pallbearer is required at this point because, after multiple listens, by which time any lingering preconceptions have been shorn away, Mind Burns Alive is revealing itself to actually be an interesting album and may now even sit as my second-favourite by the band after the mighty debut. The previous few albums, certainly those after Foundations of Burden, have felt incomplete, like a band casting around for a signature sound without exactly knowing where they are heading, but I think Mind Burns Alive has seen Pallbearer arrive where they truly want to be and feels more complete and coherent as a result. Their's is now an emotionally-charged version of doom that builds from gentle, often non-metal, beginnings up to a crescendo whereby the heavy doom riffs act as a kind of catharsis for the fear or sorrow openly displayed during each track's earlier sections. The band are obviously very technically sound, but use this ability to build atmosphere and poignancy within their music, rather than to showcase their technical chops. The guitar solos, for example, sound mournful and full of yearning, used to elicit an emotional reaction rather than wow the listener with the musician's dexterity.

Did I even mention the saxophone solo that jumps out at you during "Endless Place" yet? I'm not completely convinced said solo was entirely necessary, but it does help to illustrate that Mind Burns Alive is actually a lot better and more interesting than I originally gave it credit for. To properly appreciate it, however, I have had to shift my perspective on not only this, but the band as a whole. I wouldn't say this is a perfect album by any stretch, certainly not for my particular taste profile, but it finally sees Pallbearer getting comfortable with a particular sound that plays to their strengths and which is even capable of swaying the opinion of a cynical old bastard like me to their way of thinking. In all honesty, I had been getting a little bit bored of certain sections of the doom metal scene's predictability over recent months, so it is great to hear something that has defied and redefined my expectations.