Saturday 4 January 2014

Wolves Within: After The Burial Review

This week’s topic is a review on a new album. The album in question is the long-awaited Wolves Within from Minnesota metal wizards After The Burial.

 

It’s been three years since their last release, In Dreams, which was nothing short of brutal and violent. With this new album, they’ve gone absolutely balls to the wall.

The disgustingly low 8-string guitars that are a theme with this band make another comeback, with a tone that is all their own. Drumming throughout the entire album is incredibly tight and accurate, and the rapid double-kicks coupled with the lower-than-a-bass guitar notes complement the “trebellious” (think I just invented that word) melodies in the background perfectly. If you haven’t checked this band out prior to now, the only similar sound out there that I could mention would have to be the Swedish math-metal band Meshuggah (Hell, they’re their own genre altogether).

 

The album’s intro song, Anti-Pattern, comes out swinging with a rather eerie, frightening tone throughout. Heavy palm mutes are a staple in this tune, as they are in most work from After The Burial. The song also brings about very catchy verse segments, which one can easily bang one’s head to.

Immediately following the intro comes what are possibly the lowest, most devilish vocals on the album, inOf Fearful Men, with a return to the band’s old school sound (Rareform era). This style continues along for the majority of the album. 

Oddly enough, as often as bands try to go back to their roots, only to make a record that sounds like crap, and almost identical to the one they’re modeling it after, After The Burial have pulled off this feat, without sounding like a copy of their aforementioned 2008 record. This album sounds A LOT like Rareformbut after a few listens, it starts to sound more and more like Meshuggah, who I mentioned earlier as well.

 

With the third track, Pennyweight, the key changes drastically to one that almost reminds me of pop-punk bands nowadays. A brutal song with a key that can be described as “happy” sounds impossible, until you hear it. They also make use of other pop-punk-esque techniques in this song, such as crowd chants.

 

Disconnect, the fourth track, really “disconnects” from the momentum of the earlier songs, with a clean introduction that sounds a hell of a lot like Five Finger Death Punch. Of course this change of pace is only brief. This tune is rather progressive, and has a very obvious buildup theme to it. Intense, technical guitar makes its stand in this song.

 

We follow with Nine Summers, possibly my favouriteon the album. It’s a lot more catchy than most songs of this band’s style, and easy to tap your foot to, even if you’re more of a hard rock kind of listener. It shares many traits with the previous song, and has a similar feel to it overall.

Virga is next up to bat, speaking of hard rock, which makes excellent use of what can only be described as a 1980’s kind of tone. There’s less modern metal in this tune, and many more crunchy chords than usual. The band also features Nick Wellner on this song, who as you may know, was the frontman for the band back during their first record, Forging a Future Self. You should be able to tell his vocals apart from Anthony’s quite easily.

Neo Seoul begins rather slow, and brings a techno-sounding vibe with the staccato notes from the guitars, followed by a very heavy verse section, and complemented further by very dark, grim lyrics, which play a huge part in the entire album, for that matter. The darkness really comes out though, when accompanied by such a low, evil chord progression.

Next is Parise, another tune with those eerie melodies that just make you want to put on your evil smile along with your headphones. The staccato trend continues, followed by a rather strange bridge section, comprised largely of just bass and drums, that leaves the listener going “what?” only to progress immediately to the guitars jumping on board following the bassist’s lead, finishing off the song with that heaviness we crave.

Bringing up the rear, but certainly noteworthy, is the album’s pseudo-title-track (?), A Wolf Amongst Ravens, which, even in comparison to the rest of this album, just scares the shit out of me. The entire band takes a turn and changes the style of the whole album with this song. The heavy palm-muted, techno-like guitar comes back once more, but with high screaming vocals, accompanied byAttila-like rapping, and an overall much more evil, low sound than we are used to on this record. If this is a teaser as to what’s to come with future After The Burial albums, I’m rather excited.

All in all, this record leaves very little to be desired if you’re a fan of metalcore or death metal at all, or if you’ve listened to the band before, or even Meshuggah for that matter. Every member of the band is spot-on and dead-accurate in their performance on this album, and they brought back an old sound without screwing it up like everyone else does.

My recommendation: If you appreciate the heavier varieties of metal, check this shit out. It’ll please your eardrums and scare the shit out of your neighbours and mom.

 

- Carl “Edge” Middleton

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