Burial In The Sky – The Consumed Self
Release Date: 13th August 2021
Label: Rising Nemesis Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Death Metal, Technical Death Metal, Progressive Death Metal.
FFO: Necrophagist, Black Crown Initiate, Fallujah, Rivers Of Nihil, Alustrium, Virvum.
Review By: Mikey Goncalves
Even after all the years of brutal death flowing through my skull, I’m shocked I could still be disarmed and invaded by the Burial In The Sky’s tech-death Trojan Horse. Those god damn mystical clean vocals… Well, now the horde is here, and quite a horde it is. After viewing not only the band member list but the featured musicians, I struggle to imagine a recording studio big enough to fit them all. Anyway, back to the invasion of my village. So, there I was, watching my huts being burned to the ground, when one of their shaman lords, draped in bloody robes, pulled out a f#cking saxophone (yes you heard me right) and played lovely tones atop the corpses, that made me feel oddly accepting of the massacre I’d witnessed. Coincidence that the first “full” track is called An Orphaned City?
By the end of the third track, On Wings Of Providence I decided to sell all my clothes, throw away my computer, and live in the woods as an animal because clearly I have lost all frame of reference when it comes to Metal. It’s a shame those old CD stores like FYE aren’t really around anymore, because I would love to walk in with this record and slap the clerk whenever he put it in the incorrect section. Suffice to say there would be lots of slapping, but hey, I wouldn’t know either, hence me now living nude in the forest. All silliness aside, this brutal orgy between Satan, Wolfgang Mozart, and every musical instrument ever is sure to have dangerous and unexpected side effects, so, maybe tell your family you love them and eat a big lunch before jumping in.
By track six, Mechanisms of loneliness, I covered my genitals in leaves and walked home to get my computer out of the trash. I think I figured this record out, or at least how to digest it. Maybe living nude in the woods for a few days is just the right way to clear your mind, because your brain will delete every preconceived notion you hold about what heavy music is, with or without your consent.
The moments of melody by way of classical instruments serve endless functions other than the obvious, riposte. Frame of reference is everything. It’s the X and Y axes of our perception. Burial In The Sky illustrates absolute mastery of this. The reason this record is so striking and heavy is because it peppers in reminders of what normal music is between the sections of your tech-death lobotomy. It’s even the other way around, where the blood-soaked gutturals make the mysterious clean vocals sound ever more soulful. Every unexpected instrument reminds you how much you love the Metal standard-issue guitar, even though the devastating technical ability of its player already does. This band in one word: Talent. Your ear is the canvas for this beautiful and horrible masterpiece. The only critique I could possibly muster is: They should have chosen a palindrome as the band name. Yep, that’s all I got. This record is genre defining, groundbreaking, and has infinite replay-ability. It’s been a long time since a record has transported me somewhere new like The Consumed Self has done. This record goes places, different places every time, with only the destination remaining the same, your burial, in the sky.
(5 / 5)
