Burial Hordes – Devotion to Unholy Creed
Even though the quartet Burial Hordes is located in Greece, they defy the soaring and melodic underground black metal leanings of their countries stylistic brilliance in favor of a stripped down, older than dirt black metal vibe and overall intent in their sound. If it wasn’t for the corpse painted image and typical, though effective screaming style, Burial Hordes is teetering dangerously close to being pigeonholed as a punk band, for their guitar tone is overdriven, but still sounds very clean. It’s like they recorded a clean tone on a small amp, turned up all the way for that tortured speaker cone form of natural distortion. This is further compounded by the stripped to the bare bones/simplistic/punk/punchy riff work, most evident on “God’s Cutthroat”. A lot of motion can be felt in these structures with very little layering musically, so every song relies on the catchiness and powerful tempo shifts that range from aggressive speed to a heavy mid-paced, almost “rock” styled beat that does give these riffs even more room to work their way into my appreciation. It’s obvious one of the guitarists is also the vocalist, for the screaming structures follow the musical lines, nearly exactly, which works, but offers very little in dimension when trying to deepen the bite of this music. “Devotion to Unholy Creed” is quite memorable, but makes Burial Hordes come off as sounding VERY much like a solid garage band in overall power and loose playability. A deep listen this is not, but Burial Hordes has been suiting me just fine in the car for short trips when a lot of thought isn’t really needed to enjoy the music coming out of the speakers. This otherwise low caliber achievement is probably not what the band was shooting for, but their attempt for straight up sonic evilness and despair really didn’t translate through this unencumbered metal style. Enjoyable, but don’t expect to wear this one out. –Marty
Pulverised Records
Worm Gear 