Pallbearer – Sorrow and Extinction

by orlandooom407

In 2010, Pallbearer released a demo which flew under the radar. Fast forward nearly two years and Pallbearer’s 2012 Profound Lore debut Sorrow and Extinction is one of the most hotly anticipated releases of the new year. How did we get here? Let me explain..

Back in December, I had the pleasure of seeing this Arkansas foursome at Rites of Darkness III, and as expected, I was blown away. But Pallbearer were a last minute addition to the fest, and from the looks of it, most festgoers weren’t really familiar with them at all. This changed when they took the stage, and even in the middle of the afternoon, the floor started to get more and more crowded, mostly with people wanting to know more about them. A little later, someone I’d met in line earlier came up to me and said “This band is going to be big.”

The style of doom that Pallbearer play is certainly unique. The comparisons to Warning/40 Watt Sun are fairly obvious as Brett Campbell‘s voice bears a striking resemblance to Patrick Walker‘s. I want to point out how hard it has apparently been for critics to not go on and on about this likeness – so much so that every comment about Pallbearer will invariably mention it. I know I’m not the only one tired of hearing about it and I hate to see a young band with so much going for them being reduced to a reference to a band people are also very fond of. Comparisons are fun to show people what YOU know or what YOU like, but your full attention should be on a band, not on how many other bands you can namedrop alongside that band. Instead, I’ll say this: for me, these comparisons end at the vocals, and this band deserves your attention because of how well they do what they do – not because of another band.

Sorrow and Extinction is rooted in a very specific and unique place: Pallbearer play doom metal slowed to the pace of a funeral with distinctive influences from both American southern metal and epic doom. Clean vocals in doom metal are a tricky issue, especially in the realm of epic doom – go too far and you’re in power metal territory. I don’t need to tell doom metal fans that it can sometimes be hard for a band to make music that never feels dominated by the presence of a vocal performance as strong as Campbell’s. But that isn’t an issue here. The vocal performance is perfectly understated and even subtle at times. One of the Pallbearer’s strengths is that they work so well as a whole, without letting any one performance to dominate their work. The vocals work in the background, set against haunting funeral doom melodies, dual guitar harmonies and a sense of rhythm (and dare I say groove) rare for doom of this pace. Credit it to their southern roots, but this record does something unforeseen at this speed, it rocks. One of the album’s best moments is Devoid of Redemption (a song rerecorded from the demo) which really shows off the band’s talent at defying expectations. Maybe it’s for this reason that at no point does Sorrow and Extinction overindulge in gloom. The rhythm feels loose rather than morose, and the guitars feel alive – a fact I like to chalk it up to Pallbearer’s ability to inject blues influence back into doom metal. There’s such a great blend of styles into a cohesive whole that it makes it hard to apply the adjective-soup definitions that accompany most modern doom metal.

There’s so much more to Pallbearer than any comparison to another band could ever tell you – this record proves that in spades. All the comparisons thrown around don’t mean anything next to what the band has actually accomplished here. This is what doom metal is all about, don’t wait to hear this one.

Favorite cuts: Devoid of Redemption, Given to the Grave

– Sean McDonnell