Review by Sandre the Giant
I think I’ve reviewed everything that Live Burial have ever released on this blog now, and it is always a supreme pleasure to experience the growth of a band from the start until the present time and onward. Newcastle’s finest are releasing yet another full length through Transcending Obscurity and quality wise it is a perfect pairing. ‘Curse of the Forlorn’ is out 23rd September.
A form of death metal that is equally vicious and yet thought provoking is the order of the day, with this record featuring everything you’ve previously enjoyed about the band, only cranked up to 11. Opener ‘Despair of the Lost Soul’ begins with the kind of gloomy melody you’d find lurking in a Finnish swamp, and it starts a trend of sorts that harkens back to the swampy doomy beginnings of the band’s demo. Building from those foundations we’re hit with a cacophonous fury, a storm of cavernous roars and massive riffs. The songwriting is tremendous, probably as captivating as it has ever been. Nothing is overly technical or fiddly, but this is a labyrinthine album where riffs serpentine round each other creating a maze of intricate darkness. Eerie harmonies penetrate the suffocating murk of ‘My Head as Tribute’, while the guttural rage of ‘Exhumation and Execution’ is one of the visceral things the band has ever done, especially its evolution into haunting dirge at the end.
With tracks like the complex and deeply dark ‘Blood and Copper’ weaving a miserable tapestry of decay, you could argue that Live Burial are the complete death metal band; every element is essential to forming this sound. From the flesh carving soloing to the Alex Webster-esque bass lines that power every track through to the mighty Asphyxian roar of frontman Jamie Brown, if you remove one it wouldn’t feel the same. My favourite track may be ‘The Ordeal of Purification’, as an example of my previous point, but it is pushed very close by the monolithic closer ‘This Prison I Call Flesh’, a song that builds from pastoral acoustics into a doom laden monster full of atonal melodies, brutal low end and some inspired guitar riffs. Imagine Opeth if they’d got off the 70s Moogs and buried themselves instead into some old Pestilence records.
‘Curse of the Forlorn’ is a supreme regurgitation of the band’s career up to this point, taking everything learned in almost a decade of life and creating a masterpiece of modern death metal. It isn’t too shiny, it isn’t too technical, but it’s full of heart and soul. Diseased heart and someone else’s soul perhaps, but it doesn’t stop ‘Curse of the Forlorn’ being one of 2022’s death metal triumphs. Live Burial have fucking done it again. Stop it lads, it’s getting embarassing at this point.
https://www.facebook.com/LiveBurial
https://liveburialdeath.bandcamp.com/releases
The Killchain 