Rising metal stars Pallbearer have an unlikely fusion of influences: melancholic doom, prog that’s more ’80s slick than ’70s technical, and a touch of Boston’s hyper-produced hard rock. One couldn’t have predicted they would go from cult metal festivals like Rites of Darkness to Bonnaroo in a few years. Pallbearer should be commended for making it this far with their sound, but Heartless, their third record, shows that they have run up against their limits.
Album opener “I Saw the End” is similar to Foundations of Burden’s “The Ghost I Used to Be,” Pallbearer’s first realization that they could take their heavy sound and mold it into something catchy. Those often opposite attributes are sharpened and condensed, especially when guitarist Devin Holt rips into his solo at the end. They covered Type O Negative’s “Love You to Death” on last year’s Fear and Fury EP, and in “The End” they’ve mastered Kenny Hickey’s layered, warm goth-metal soloing. Combined with their Pallbearer’s love of Pink Floyd, they’ve reaffirmed prog’s role into metal, especially Rush’s cerebral rocking.
Heartless could use more of that inspiration. They’ve become their own worst enemy by writing meandering tracks that betray their prog loftiness and their innate need to crush. “Thorns” attempts to light the same fire as “The End” and exhausts itself as it goes on. “Lie of Survival” and “Dancing in Madness” are worse offenders, as both build towards nothing and use doom as a crutch, rather than as a starting point. In the past, weighty sorrow poured out; here, it’s strained, slow for the sake of slow. Background synths don’t add anything to these songs, and they also don’t get across bassist Joseph Rowland’s infatuation with krautrock. The beginning of “Dancing” is ripe for more active electronics, some series of Tangerine Dream-like arpeggios, something to break up the monotony that was once so rich. Pallbearer are not shredders or speed demons; any slight dip in momentum is fatal, and those two tracks shoot Heartless down. It hasn’t worked against them before, as they were adapting doom into prog’s confines, but this record doesn’t move that concept forward.
“Cruel Road” awakens Heartless from its stupor by taking a lumbering approach to theatrical metal. “Road” moves like a King Diamond song in its succession: a brooding intro, rising hysterics, a dip into neoclassical melodies, then another climatic spike to close the song. Overt dramatics are something Pallbearer hasn’t worked with before, and it feels a lot fresher than most of the record. The common line between “I Saw the End” and “Cruel Road” is Pallbearer falter less when they break out from their gloomy template. “A Plea For Understanding” is the longest and most somber track on Heartless, and perhaps its best, with a lighter take on doom. Holt and Campbell’s shimmering cleans really carry that mournful feeling “Dancing” and “Lie” struggle to convey, and Campbell’s vocals have never soared higher. “A Plea” is such a chore to get to, and it’s too bad Heartless is more defined by its bookends.
I recently saw Pallbearer perform in Austin, and Rowland was brimming with energy, acting almost as a hype man, and Holt found a new ecstatic height in his soloing. They brought an arena liveliness to a sound that requires patience. “The End” benefitted from this invigorated band, and there’s good to reason to think it will become a staple of their sets. Bringing it live is still crucial to metal success, and on that front they are ready to ascend to the next level. That doesn’t translate on Heartless, where too much space is squandered.
