When underground metal bands appeal to non-metal listeners, it's often because they've found a way to tweak, expand, or do away with genre conventions. Outside of iconic heavy classic rock or shiny mainstream metal, this doesn't mean the music is easier to listen to as a result—there's the collaborative art-drone of Sunn O))), as unlikely a crossover band as any, and Deafheaven's blend of shoegaze guitar textures and screamo/black metal vocals. It's rare that a contemporary group remains entirely in the metal world and still manages to find an audience outside of it, but the vintage-doom players in Pallbearer have done just that. Their ascension started with their debut, 2012's excellent Sorrow and Extinction, and with the release of their brilliant second album, Foundations of Burden, it's easy to imagine them gaining even more popularity.
When the Arkansas quartet put out Sorrow, they had already built excitement in the metal underground based on a three-song 2010 demo; but for most people, the five-song, 49-minute LP—with its gorgeous guitar tones and sky-soaring vocals—was their first taste of the group. Pallbearer ended Sorrow's thank you list with "and, of course Black Sabbath," which made perfect sense because they appeal to that diverse cross section of people who also thank Black Sabbath for their own personal reasons.
Two years later, they've returned with a collection that feels even more connected to the pure, unadulterated aspects of doom, and Pallbearer have transcended the need to thank anyone but themselves. The group were given a bigger budget from their label Profound Lore to record Foundations, and they did so with Billy Anderson, who also sat behind the controls for the classic Sleep oeuvre and has recorded seminal works for High on Fire, Melvins, Jawbreaker, and others (including Red House Painters, who's early material had a sense of space that makes sense in this realm).
In an interview I did with Pallbearer co-founder/co-lyricist/bassist Joseph D. Rowland, he said Anderson told them he's never recorded a band that used so many guitar tracks—an element of Pallbearer's sound that explains the massiveness of Foundations, as well as how they saw *Sorrow'*s successes as an opportunity to deepen and strengthen their craft. This is an ambitious record that doesn't feel at all over-worked or stale, and while Sorrow and Extinction holds up beautifully two years later, Foundations is the stronger collection to the point that Sorrow almost comes across as demos for this new material.
Though Pallbearer arrived fully formed, vocalist/guitarist Brett Campbell's stirring voice was a little pitchy live, suggesting that he was sometimes straining beyond his abilities. When I reviewed Sorrow, I said that "Campbell has been described as a young Ozzy Osbourne, and that influence is certainly there, but imagine if a young Ozzy had the ability to transform into Geddy Lee." His singing on Foundations has more ease, soul, and grit, and he sounds steadier, smoother, and more assured. It helps, too, that bassist Rowland and guitarist Devin Holt offer their own vocals on three tracks, adding details, depth, and complexity to the melodies. When they join Campbell, you get the sense of a madrigal, with overlapping harmonies that will give you goosebumps. You get a taste of it right out of the gate on the 10-minute opener, "Worlds Apart", a song that features cascading three-part vocals powering upward between layered guitars that crunch at the same time as they soothe. On "The Ghost I Used to Be", Rowland's screamed vocals mix with Campbell's more honeyed voice, creating a raw, almost punk dynamic for Pallbearer that didn't exist previously.
There's dense, regal play all over Foundations: guitars collide, a Rhodes adds subtle details in the distance. There are new textures, bigger tempo shifts, and dynamic turns. It's a great headphone record, but you'll want to be listening to these songs in a larger room where you can move around and make contact. Where Sorrow often felt like a great solitary album—especially in its focus on death and mortality—Foundations is clearly built for larger communal spaces, as even the quiet moments are massive. Pallbearer are patient, and the textures they build feel painterly (kudos to Anderson, many times over). There are moments where things drop out, like on "Watcher in the Dark", where you get some low-level fuzz accompanied by Mark Lierly's nimble drumming (he's a more agile, technical player than original drummer Chuck Schaaf). When the rest of the instruments return at full volume, it's physically impossible not to want to move. In the same song, there's a limber guitar solo over gentle piano parts; elsewhere, synthesizers hum, bells chime, the band showcases a newfound swagger to go with the psychedelia and '70s prog.
The music's catchy, too, and full of hooks. Pallbearer are proud fans of rock groups like Boston and Rainbow, and these songs, while long, go down easy. As Rowland told me, "[Our songs] are all almost exactly three times the length of a standard pop song, almost to the second, so I decided that that's our version of writing pop songs." With the twinkling three-minute "Ashes", you actually get to hear them doing doom-as-dusky ambient pop.
Rowland has talked about how Sorrow was focused on a loved one's death, and that the subject matter of Foundations is more varied; even so, these songs deal in ashes, formless voids, feasting on blood, time crushing things, and in general, loss. Still, it's never a bummer. In "Worlds Apart", Campbell sings "Where lays our heart of hearts defined/ My darkness and your light, still yet remain entwined." This mixture of light and dark seems to be the crux of Pallbearer, a group who make sadness seem uplifting, darkness seem bright, and songs about mortality seem life-giving. The final words of the album are: "We're always shifting/ And always becoming." The sentiment comes during the stampeding moments of the heady, muscular "Vanished", and that endless becoming is fitting on both an emotional and conceptual level. Foundations finds a band firing on all cylinders, and surpassing what seemed like a watermark for the genre. As obsessed as Pallbearer is with endings, the music here is timeless.
