Pallbearer - "Mind Burns Alive"

Not all existential threats are physical

I’m always looking for new Doom Metal. The genre just scratches an itch that nothing else really does. And acts in this space don’t get a lot of publicity, so it’s easy to overlook a good band until they’ve been around for a decade or more.

Like Pallbearer.

The Doom Metallers from Little Rock, Arkansas¹ have been active for about fifteen years, and producing albums for about twelve, with their debut dropping in 2012.

Like all Doom, the tracks on Mind Burns Alive are unanimously long, slow, and tonally-dark affairs. The album runs for 51 minutes, but there are only six songs, which range between 6:39 and 10:38 in playtime. Vocalist Brett Campbell’s middling tenor is an element that takes some acclimation; it fits better as the album progresses, but is always a bit shocking on opener “Where the Light Fades”, as it just doesn’t mesh with my expectations. Ultimately, he sounds more like a classic Heavy Metal vocalist, which helps to bridge the band, stylistically, back to its roots; several riffs, throughout the album, are also reminiscent of the sound of classic Heavy.

There are also moments throughout the album which ring of Prog and Sludge, and the inclusion of sax on “Endless Place” is, frankly, incredible. But the core remains slow, steady, low-tuned, and anxious Doom.

And, the initial shock of Campbell’s vocals aside, it’s truly excellent Doom. Never rushed, always emotionally honest and fraught with existential terror.

Mind Burns Alive specifically focuses on the kind of existentialism that results from a worldwide pandemic and quarantine. Thematically, it focuses on the concepts of isolation, loneliness, and the toll that those things take on mental health. You can see it in the song titles and lyrics, and you can feel it in the music — the band lived these things, and the songs have grown, naturally, from the emotional depth and turmoil of those experiences. They are intensely relatable, even when heavily disguised in Metallic metaphor.

From “Endless Place”:

So here I am
Lost within the maze
Indecision
A trudge through countless days
Labyrinthine avenues
No notion where they lead
Whispers burning like a furnace
It brings me to my knees

I don’t need my degree to understand this. We all felt this during lockdown, when time became meaningless and the world stood still.

And then, from closing track “With Disease”:

We tread upon departed dreams, lying deep under stones
Upon lives that were guided to extremes
By confusion that is ever found, by forlorn filled with need
In the end, did they feel justifiеd in the words they beliеved?

Again, I do not think this needs any explanation.

I fell in love with this album before the first playthrough finished. The second has reinforced it. It isn’t perfect, but it’s definitely one of my favorite new finds thus far this year.

Rating: Blue

1. I’m beginning to notice a trend with American Doom Metal acts originating in flyover states.