INTER ARMA — Sky Burial (review)

Album · 2013 · Sludge Metal

3/5 · 2014-01-03
AtomicCrimsonRush

Inter Arma’s “Sky Burial” is a diverse album merging so many various styles that it is quite astonishing. The opening track ‘The Survival Fires’ is brimming over with dark shrieks of black metal over an incessant doomy riff that represents a very deep resonating sludge metal sound. It simply grinds your ears to pulp and those shrieks are downright manic. It continues with the main riff hypnotising you until it moves into a lengthy lead break that is distorted and finally an outbreak of speed drumming and an onslaught of heavy riffs brought mercilessly to a halt by one final guitar blast. After this assault the next track ‘The Long Road Home (Iron Gate)’ just settles into gentle acoustics and quiet singing which is jarring to the ear after the previous brutality.

This is followed by a 10 minute spacey piece ‘The Long Road Home’ that is so reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s ‘Careful With That Axe Eugene’ I expected shrieks any second. Instead there is a soaring lead break of palatable beauty that follows. The guitars are well executed by Steven Russell and Trey Dalton. This lead guitar solo is so uplifting it is sensual to the ears caressing them with long strokes. The wind effect lends a corporeal effect making it seem like the moonlit hallows of some darkened forest.

The psychedelic atmosphere is totally broken with the next track ‘Destroyer’ that opens with a blast of distorted guitar and hyper speed percussion. The shrieks return and Mike Paparo screams his throat rawer than vintage Tom Gabriel Fischer. The speedy guitar lick is weird as it is not like the average speed metal lick but more of a speeded up jam session. The drums are incredible by T.J. Childers. I used to listen to a lot of Bathory in the 90s and this sounded like the band were channelling the dark tones of Tomas "Ace" Börje Forsberg aka Quorthon, especially the memorable ‘Call From The Grave’. Joe Kerkes doomy bass line is a feature, and the guitars lock into a sludge metal riff as lowered shrieks are heard. I have no idea of the lyrics but it sounds bleak and is perhaps about some blood sacrifice though I don’t want to know. I also felt the voice here was more like the sound heard by Death especially on their “Spiritual Warfare”. I certainly felt like I was too old to be revisiting the music I used to listen to in my mid 20s and I know I could not play this out loud or my wife would walk out so my earphones came in handy! It is not for the squeamish as it really is dark metal, but for those into it they will eat this up no doubt. That droning guitar is a sludge sound and is perhaps more akin to a machine than actual music. The tribalistic drums quicken the heart rate and it gradually builds slowly with patience into a frightening crescendo. Though this throbbing guitar drone goes on way too long for its own good and becomes an annoyance after a while like an angry wasp.

The next track ‘’sblood’ has a skull crunching tribal rhythm like Sepultura’s “Roots Bloody Roots” classic or even those drums on of 80s Celtic Frost. The song has more variation with a number of tempo changes and styles so appeals to me more and my prog attuned ears. I would hail it as one of the best on the album and it deserves to be heard if not anything else on this album. ‘Westward’ is another lengthy affair at about 10 minutes, and has too much screeching vocals for my tastes but the lead break is fabulous. I love the main riff on this that just grinds along at a steady pace.

‘Love Absolute’ is shorter at 4 minutes, and is an instrumental that focusses on acoustic finger picking at first that sounds like the typical quiet intro to 80s metal but there is a screeching in the background threatening to explode the quiet atmosphere. Instead a ghostly synth sound enters howling at a high frequency and gives it a Gothic ethereal vibe.

‘Sky Burial’ is a 13 minute doomy track that crunches along steadily on 4 barre chord changes. The lead guitar embellishments are sonically phased like a distant cry. Then it settles into a dreamy slow pace with psychedelic atmospheres. I can actually discern the lyrics on this one that are “At long last I have scaled, The spire to the sky, A stone's throw to the heavens above, Far past the skylines of cities, Fading into ruination, Far past the threadbare flags of nations spiralling into entropy, At this summit I'll feign death to call forth the scavenger's clan.” So there you go, that is what they are singing about, some mystic rituals of dark arts and an adventure of Gothic explorations through dark chasms and misty mountains. This one is very doom metal in sound and again has that Bathory sound though not as raw.

In a similar way to some Opeth albums there are songs that really appeal to me and then there are moments that are not to my tastes, particularly the darker screeches that are really only going to appeal to elite black metal or extreme metal fans. I liked the sludgey metal sounds and some of the more innovative moments but I believe this is an album that will divide opinion due to its insanely dark content and atmospheres. 3 stars for the original approach of blending psychedelic sounds with doomy black metal.