Release date: August 19, 2014 | Profound Lore | Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Website
I think this is the most drastic tempo shift between two episodes of A Scene In Retrospect, as we’re going straight from tech-death to doom metal. Pallbearer are one of the biggest names in doom right now, and honestly beyond it as well. This year saw the release of their stellar new record Mind Burns Alive, which should give their trajectory another massive correction towards the stars, as it’s their most diverse and impressive release this far. Back in 2014, Foundations Of Burden, incidentally, laid the foundations for their future successes, as said album put them on the radar of many listeners in- and outside of the metal circuit for the very first time.
Broc Nelson
Ah sweet doom metal, my longest genre love. I will always remember a rainy autumn day when I was twelve. Sitting in the car with my Discman portable CD player and a new copy of We Sold Our Soul For Rock & Roll, a greatest hits album of the Ozzy-era Black Sabbath. My mom went to get groceries, and I stayed behind listening to a life changing experience. Sabbath changed my music tastes forever, and I have never stopped seeking the thrill of new music. So, doom metal holds a very, very dear place in my heart, and when I say that Pallbearer are simply one of the best modern doom bands, I am not saying that lightly.
I first heard Pallbearer upon the release of 2011’s Sorrow And Extinction. Their long-form doom with sorrowful vocals was reminiscent of Candlemass and Warning and of course the riffs were indebted to the God himself, Tony Iommi. Sorrow And Extinction felt like an instant classic, and Pallbearer was positioned to take over the doom scene. It was only a question of if the young band could maintain or top their hype.
Three years later, Foundations Of Burden was released, erasing all doubt that this band could fail. The massive opening track, “Worlds Apart”, contains riffs that are embedded in my soul. Like, should some newcomer to the genre ask what doom metal sounds like, “Worlds Apart” is one of the best answers. The clean yet profoundly sad vocals, the solos, the perfect rhythm section makes a textbook study in epic, traditional doom.
The album doesn’t let up, either. The way “Worlds Apart” transitions into “Foundation” with the drone-like hum of amps giving way to a powerful drum intro followed by more massive riffs that eventually bleed into “Watcher In The Dark” is pure doom magic.
I know I am just gushing, but understand that as much as I love doom, and in particular consumed a caldera sized bongful of doom in the early 2010s, Pallbearer’s execution of their craft is upper echelon. To this day, there are few bands that can hold a black candle to their sound. On Foundations Of Burden, they touch on funeral doom, but without the death growls in the general funeral procession vibe of the record and the slow pacing on tracks like “Watcher In The Dark” and “Vanished.” All the while, they maintain the classic/traditional feeling.
The ten-year anniversary of Foundations Of Burden is fitting, because not only is it one of the best doom records in the last ten years, but its chief contender is this year’s Mind Burns Alive, an album that is high in the ranking for my album of the year picks. On Mind Burns Alive, Pallbearer takes a bit of a cleaner and slightly more progressive approach, which feels new, but the shortest song on Foundations Of Burden, “Ashes,” is an early indicator of sounds to come with its gentle organ and reverb laced drums and vocals.
The fact that Pallbearer are capable of making near perfect doom albums ten years apart AFTER they made an instant classic is, to me, concrete proof that no other doom band comes close to touching their skills. Heartless and Forgotten Days are nothing to shake a stick at either. They have had an incredible run, and hopefully will continue, though at this point their legacy is enshrined in the mausoleum of doom metal greats. Hail Pallbearer!
Jake Walters
Wow, has it been 10 years? Foundations Of Burden might be the first material from these Arkansas doomsters that found its way into my ears and revisiting it for this feature has stirred up some nostalgia and some new revelations. That’s the beauty of this sort of approach: finding new ways to appreciate older things. However there’s something that I feel like I need to express before I start digging into the album as a whole. Pallbearer are a band that I feel like have been around me at very important and formative times in my life since their inception. Their music, live performances, and growth have all had a huge impact on me insomuch that it almost feels like their existence is intertwined with my own journey across this coil of mortality. I saw them live in a basement venue seven or eight years ago and their presence blew me away. Their album Heartless was one that I was listening to when I decided to start writing about music back in 2017. And to top it all off, their new record Mind Burns Alive was there for me this year when life took me down some rough and unexpected roads. I feel linked to this band and their music and for that I am grateful but also pleasantly surprised that this is the band that has been there for me through all of these changes and moments. So Pallbearer, if you’re reading this, thank you. Now, onto Foundations Of Burden.
Doom metal is still one of those genres that has more misses than hits for me. Perhaps it’s my attention span, perhaps it’s my love of catchy riffs engineered to make my neck snap. In spite of this and when the stars align, doom can be one of the most emotionally resonant genres and when in the hands of skilled musicians and lyricists, this is a sound that can really stick with me. Foundations Of Burden is one of these moments. All of the ingredients that I need to latch onto a record like this are present and more. From the crescendos in the outros of songs like “Watcher in the Dark” to the palpable emotion in Brett Campbell’s voice, there are so many elements that can quickly get their hooks into me that make my love of this record and band irrevocable.
What makes this record really stand out is that these songs are inherently and indelibly doom metal but they don’t feel like they’re written with the intent to adhere to genre norms. “The Ghost I Used to Be” is one of the best examples of this. The melody of the vocal lines set against the leads and pulsating rhythms of this track are something special. It hardly seems like 10+ minutes have passed and if you’re making me feel that way on a doom record then you can bet it’s going to stick with me. There’s also the harmonies on “Vanished” which expound on that melancholic vibe that Pallbearer nails so consistently. Perhaps there’s something in that Arkansas water that makes the doom metal from that region feel almost spiritual but that feeling comes through loud and strong on Foundations Of Burden on nearly every track.
This is also the record that set them on the path that they stayed on for the next decade. That signature guitar tone that is equal parts watery and crunchy is a Pallbearer staple and it’s oozing out of every track on this album. I also want to single out Mark Lierly’s drumming. The drums in a doom song are often the least noticeable but this album’s songs find incredible ways to make that part of the rhythm section feel like an active player rather than just a background extra. The fills and tasteful cymbal crashes on the opener “Worlds Apart” is a great example of how important the drumming is for their sound and I think that more doom drummers deserve their time in the spotlight.
Taking this album for another ride has been comforting and revealing and seeing where the band was a decade ago and contrasting it to where they are now, it’s easy to see them pulling on those threads. What Pallbearer have always done well is to find a way to authentically express emotion in a heavy music context and that’s no easy feat. Foundations Of Burden is a pure example of a band refining and pushing their ideas into something that would mold them for years to come and I’m glad that we get to go back to this and soak it all up. We’ll be talking about this record for the next 10 years.
David Rodriguez
Foundations Of Burden really came at the perfect time. I was getting deep into underground and extreme metal, but especially took a liking to doom, exploring its roots with Candlemass, Trouble, and Black Sabbath stuff I hadn’t checked yet among others. Then along comes this band named Pallbearer with striking cover art and a sound that has melody to it, just with ankle weights. I believe I heard “Watcher in the Dark” first as a single, but diving into the album it came from really left an impression on me, starting a decade-long fan journey that I’m still very much on.
The thing is, for as good and consistent as Pallbearer have been throughout the years, I can and do always come back to Foundations of Burden. It is, likely through early attachment and nostalgia (can you have nostalgia for something just ten years ago?), my favorite album of theirs and likely always will be. At that point, I wasn’t coming across very many albums or bands that explored a dense emotionality like they do. My metal was fast, wicked, and often blasphemous – certainly good enough for my ears then and now, but I’ve always been a pretty emotional person all things considered. I like when things resonate with me internally, even if the lyrics aren’t as grounded as your common pop or country heartstring tuggers.
“Worlds Apart” is still one of my favorite doom songs ever. I don’t think I will ever forget its wailing guitar melodies, a far cry from the more driving instrumentation and dirtied ‘80s riffing found on Candlemass’ Nightfall (another fave). And what was this? Deeply mournful crooning as opposed to the soaring operatic notes sung by Messiah Marcolin or the wretched gutturals from… uh, any other metal band I was into at the time (shout out Dave Davidson, Damian Herring, and Nergal I guess – again, this was ten years ago). The songs were long too. Though I was getting into more exploratory, challenging stuff and always had a bit of a prog rock background, ten-plus-minute songs were a wild-ass ask of me as someone still seeking the hardest, heaviest, fastest, evilest, coolest shit out there with no reprieve. Undiagnosed ADHD I’m sure also contributed, but I digress.
There was a certain poeticism captured by the band too. “Worlds Apart” considered the yin and yang of life with some of the most vivid and powerful language I came across in metal at the time:
‘Without light
The dark encloses all
Our works would be but ash
No knowledge of the time that crushes love to dust
Or the life that’s frozen deep within our veins‘Without dark
The light burns out our eyes
And turns each of us to ash
Our hearts, too hard to ever learn to feel
And mouths, laid open, deep in silent song’
The band still do this to great effect today.
Pallbearer made you slow down and consider a lot because that’s how they played, that’s how they functioned. “Watcher in the Dark” meanders instrumentally for a full three minutes before a single vocal is voiced – silly to say that now like it’s something out of the ordinary or weird, but it was more so at the time for me. It required patience, it asked you to sit and wallow in the moment, to open up and allow yourself to feel. It’s probably my least favorite song on Foundations Of Burden and yet I still love it and find it very affecting.
“The Ghost I Used to Be” is another massive song, but has more momentum than “Watcher in the Dark”. There’s some Ozzy-like vocal inflection and range here from Brett Campbell. It’s quite impressive and endlessly imitable, real chill-inducing stuff that sticks with you for years, especially the second verse. If I could sing well, I’d cover the hell out of this song. The main riff just collapses you, feeling each guitar strum deep in your bones, but Campbell’s voice resurrects like the spell of a necromancer and calls you to attention. There’s also some nice faded background screams to accent sections of the third verse that are uniquely agonied and nice for how simple they are.
“Ashes” was such a gut punch to me the first time I heard it, legitimately making me cry. I was going through a lot around that time in 2014 when this album came out (most of it self-induced, let’s be real), so hearing the fragile keys and the forlorn melody they formed just broke me. “Ashes” is so fucking sad, a real funereal track that plays on finality and the end, whatever that means to us. It’s the shortest track on Foundations Of Burden by far and yet it’s the most affecting to me, like I’m speedrunning the five stages of grief.
Speaking more academically about Foundations Of Burden, it was a very important release for Pallbearer, it being their breakthrough album. Their 2012 debut LP, Sorrow and Extinction, while good, didn’t crack through the ungiving fuselage of indie success like this one did. I mean, it’s how I found the band and I was mostly only looking at more popular and established blogs and tastemakers around that time for new music to dive into – the fact this album broke through, caught attention, and was passed onto me and others like me says it all. It started a tender-but-heavy doom legacy for the band that’s never faltered. Pallbearer have literally never missed and if their last phenomenal album, Mind Burns Alive, is any indication, they’re not stopping any time soon. In fact, they just revitalize and keep going with each release, each album like a burning checkpoint of fire that propels their doomy air balloon higher and higher until they dot the sky.
Pallbearer really wasn’t what I wanted in 2014, but it was what I needed. That’s why I appreciated it so much, because it forced me to get out of my box and what I thought was my comfort zone, putting up unassailable walls of metal that I needed to take down instead. Learning early on that it’s better to keep an open mind about most things and to not be afraid to explore and deviate from what you know about yourself, and how it can be beneficial to you, is imperative. Most metal bands may not think or hope their music elicits such a strong reflective and emotional response, but most bands aren’t Pallbearer.
