PALLBEARER — Heartless (review)

PALLBEARER — Heartless album cover Album · 2017 · Doom Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
Nightfly
Pallbearer’s particular brand of doom is relatively speaking an easy listen. The riffs aren’t heavily drenched in fuzz a la Electric Wizard or overlaid with growl vocals like Evoken or Ahab for example. Their riffs can be crushingly heavy but they also inject plenty of melody making them a band that could appeal to more traditional metal and hard rock fans. If those observations were true with 2014’s excellent Foundations Of Burden then with Heartless they’ve even taken it a step further towards more mainstream territory.

Now don’t get me wrong, Pallbearer can still be pretty heavy and perhaps using the word mainstream might be a bit misleading, but you can probably get my drift. There are moments on here though where they are positively mellow like the eight minute Lie Of Survival where they virtually leave doom behind. Dancing In Madness starts off similarly but over its twelve minutes has time to kick in and enter heavier territory. Pallbearer still have plenty of great riffs though and alongside them the more melodic and mellower passages work well making Heartless a very mature piece of work. The vocals are also still on the melodic side and have improved with occasional harmonies thrown in which work well. The longer songs not surprisingly have some welcome diversions and twists to keep things interesting, even injecting some prog elements. Album closer A Plea For Understanding shows the greatest use of dynamics of all with some particularly melodic sections. Cruel Road whilst one of the shorter songs still packs a lot in to its seven minutes with some particularly captivating riffing. Followed by the slightly more upbeat title track they make the best side of the album on my beautifully packaged double vinyl version. The production is excellent – heavy and organic with a particularly open drum sound, perfect for this sort of stuff.

Whilst Heartless is a band showing growth for which they should be applauded I think I still slightly prefer the heavier Foundations Of Burden. Their debut Sorrow And Extinction I’m less familiar with and haven’t heard in some time so I won’t do any comparisons there. Nevertheless, Heartless is still a very good doom metal album that most Pallbearer fans should be more than happy with.
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