Pallbearer: Mind Burns Alive

In a modern day culture that demands the immediacy to feel something, Pallbearer reach that point by sticking to past traditions.

The Little Rock, Arkansas four-piece—Brett Campbell (vocals, guitar), Joseph D. Rowland (bass), Devin Holt (guitar) and Mark Lierly (drums)—blasted onto the scene with the Hulk-like one-two of Sorrow and Extinction (2012) and Foundations of Burden (2014). Unafraid to unleash their inner-Sabbath, since their excellent first two albums, attention towards the doom sentinels has reduced despite them remaining as consistent as anyone in this space.

It continues on their fifth long-player, Mind Burns Alive. Written at the same time as 2020’s Forgotten Days, Mind Burns Alive is every bit as poignant in what could be considered their most defining work yet. Aesthetically, Pallbearer shift the needle, led by the themes of seismic loss and the crawling horror of bereavement. Circumstances that become more prevalent as we grow older, and here Pallbearer tackle it head on.

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It’s these moments in life where an individual is not only at their most vulnerable, but also at their most candid, and Campbell transfers these emotions to tape with a series of compositions that stir up the embers.

From the literal titles to the direct narratives themselves, Pallbearer don’t obfuscate, instead hoping their audience will bear some of the emotional weight these songs carry. On Where the Light Fades, Campbell begins with a searing wrath of doom (“We are frozen here / Picking at wounds we will not let heal” and “Too many fears of what might be real”). It’s the kind of directness that made lo-fi such a freeing experience, and as the misery drips into the grooves, Holt’s lumbering riffs and chord progressions match the weight of Campbell’s tale.

While the mystical imagery of temples and echoes from the void still feature, Pallbearer manage to construct this Sabbathian Dio-era journey metal at half-speed, walking along the faultiness in search of new ground. And they find it on the title track, which almost crumbles under the weight of despair, as Campbell explores the helplessness and erosion of the mind that mourning a lost one brings.

There’s no going back on Signals, which sees Pallbearer not only write their most candid song, but also their most heartbreaking. Again, the themes are all linked but here you get the sense that Campbell reaches the blast zone (“Those you leave behind always suffer the consequences” and “You tell me you want to run and want to free yourself from pain / But the demons haunting you hold you in this place”). Here Pallbearer pivot sonically, adopting the origins of hard rock, and coupled with their famous doom resonances, it’s the perfect sonic bedding for Mind Burns Alive’s motifs.

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While the poetic Endless Place contains brief flashes of the Pallbearer of old (“Whispers burning life a furnace / It brings me to my knees”), these protracted moments of barrelling doom metal are designed to drag you into the vortex. Which is where the band remain on Daybreak. Mind Burns Alive’s centrepiece, with the minor chords enough to melt the heart in the same way Pink Floyd’s Mother had hardened men shedding tears into their pint glasses. It’s something that Pallbearer haven’t been given enough credit for over the years, but like their kindred spirits YOB, time and time again, they’ve extracted sorrow from the deepest wells inside the doom pantheon.

With Disease maintains the dread and sunken gloom as darkness doesn’t just knock on the door, it kicks it off its hinges. A moment where light at the end of the tunnel simply doesn’t exist. Which is why Mind Burns Alive is an album that will bring the weak to their knees while also finding the pressure points of those made of stronger stuff.

Those who have travelled through the same blast zones as Pallbearer do on Mind Burns Alive will know just how emotionally draining this encounter is. It’s an album that triggers, demanding you to recount your demons. Those catastrophic thoughts once suppressed, back again and nagging with torment. It’s not healthy. But sometimes dark moments need to be lived, and Mind Burns Alive sees Pallbearer living them, unconcerned for the aftermath.

Mind Burns Alive is out now via Nuclear Blast. Purchase from Bandcamp.