The Burial (Facedown Records)

Wow, I had never heard of The Burial and this band really surprised me in a positive way. First song I heard was En-Hakkore and I was really digging what I heard. This I knew was right down my alley. I recognized the vocalist immediately and surely it was Elisha Mullens from bands like A Hill To Die Upon and Fleshkiller. 

I´ll start off with right away that this was something i really dug right from the opening track. Just have to say that I think with guys at this level of musicianship it´s really a shame that their highest listener count on Spotify is a modest 27k. That´s outrageous. I really liked the ‘In The Taking Of The Flesh’, it´s really well written technical death metal, really tasty riffs and really interesting song structures. I liked the dynamics, good portion of blast beats but still plenty of breathers so to speak, and I think they manage to balance that to my taste. I also get some Spawn Of Possession vibes at times which is a plus in my book.

Musicianship is absolutely top notch, some of the riffing is really impressive and skillfully executed. Growls are absolutely my type of growls; I love his timbre and Elisha is a very versatile vocalist and awesome guitarist. The overall production is really good, it´s a very dense mix and thick sound which I love. I love massive productions even if blast beat records tend to have quite small drum productions just to make room for everything, a snappy snare is common to get the blast beats through and all, but these guys maintain that heavy meaty sound I love in death metal. 

There´s however a couple of minor cons with the mix, as I mentioned it´s full and dense, but at times it feels that it´s just about to break. At some really heavy parts it´s right on the verge on distorting just a tiny bit, which is quite common these days. The master has been driven really hard, due to the loudness war this is what we do with mixes today. Drive em as hard as possible, it´s all about perceived energy, louder is perceived as better. If we don´t comply to this loudness war it will sound dull and boring compared to all the other maxed albums out there. Psychologically you´re sort of fooled that the album at 1db lower volume is not as good as the maxed out. The last mastering process where you push up the volume is really sensitive where a change within 1 db. will make a massive difference. As a reference, I had a mix that I received, and it felt a bit to pushed like I´m experiencing here with The Burial - In The Taking Of The Flesh. We tried to lower 1db and it sounded dull immediately, it just lacked the energy and punch, tried to lower 0.5db from the original and still it was a huge difference in perceived energy and punch. So, I decided to go with the original first and compromise that some parts will sound a bit too driven but still the overall feel was better than the 0.5-1bd lower versions.

Then I found myself at certain times reacting on that I wished the vox were just a tiny louder, I would´ve raised them a 0.5db which can make a huge difference when mixing.

Conclusion for 'In The Taking Of The Flesh' is that it´s a really good album that I really enjoyed and a shame that I hadn´t found these earlier. Something I will definitely give more spins. Personally still a bit confused how such good musicians have not gotten more exposure. Just a perfect example of how hard and difficult it is for bands to get that deserved space. It´s a very crowded market. Unless you´re not backed up with a major label with alot of marketing resources you´re bound to disappear in the masses no matter how good you are. Some get that lucky push and get noticed despite the lack of resources. But it´s a tough market for sure with all the gazillion trillions of bands out there.

For the older ones, they  didn´t hit me as hard at a first spin. Listening backwards from the latest to the oldest I had some problems to adjust to the different mixes on each, where the debut was a quite bad mix and not an enjoyable listening coming straight from In the Taking... However after getting accustomed to a new mix I found 'Lights and Perfections' to be cool as well, but maybe not as perfected as ‘In The Taking Of The Flesh’. I will definitely give them a proper spin because this band did leave me wanting to revisit them. 

Make sure to give them some support, these guys deserves it.

https://open.spotify.com/artist/26ulCwPF9bFDn6wAeELltJ?si=9A5FbwqCQC2EOJg-Yifq0Q