The Burial Tree (II)

Music groups would have to be careful when coming at the listener under the guise of being “progressive death metal”. Not that they wouldn’t have any kind of capacity to do the genre justice; it’s just that the style can be pretty unforgiving. Outside of later-era Death and Opeth, many progressive death metal acts I’ve come across try to put so much into their overall sound that it leaves you cold and unwelcome in their musical way of things (though Death has done this, too, from time to time…). It takes both a keen ear to appreciate and keen fingers to write, the way I see it.

So with that said, let’s see if Ana Kefr have the capacity to make it all work in the end…

Certainly, this album possesses a sound that truly betrays the cover art (something that tickles me in the right places time and again), and no doubt the band has a specific idea as to what they want to sound like. This is what saves them from entering Weirdsville throughout “The Burial Tree (II)” (sometimes…); this is some well-thought out material, tackling melody and intensity like a group of professionals with more than half their teeth cut by time and ability. The riffs and harmonies themselves exist on a plane that could very well be seen as foreign and alien, which helps the album continue to maintain interest on my end. I was drawn in as the tracks progressed, kinda wanting to see what would happen next, and the change-ups of tempo and overall madness kept them from stagnating, even though a bit of normalcy in the arrangements would have helped in the long run (it’s a tricky thing to jump from one idea to the next without a safety net, the way I see it); between the blast-beating frenzies, the snail-crawling passages, the brutal, symphonic tandems and the deathcore-ish breakdowns, I sorta felt lost as I proceeded through the album, and no matter how fancy and creative the passages may have been, this sort of chaotic abandon is still a tricky bitch to control and master no matter how hard one can try. And for that I can’t fault Ana Kefr, and can still enjoy what they have to offer me. This is still a pretty impressive disc, chock full of monstrous riffs, haunting synth leads, crushing drum work, and insidious growls betraying a bit of the progressive feel, which itself is honored by way of the more upbeat harmonic elements, echoed clean singing and even some clarinet thrown in for good measure (and it FITS!) unleashing torrents of impure anger and very Funeral Mist-y lyrics pertaining to the evils of religion (and rightfully so!) and other dark, misanthropic tales. And it’s in that honesty that the band truly shines; there’s no real BS here, and songs like “Emago”, “Monody” and “Thaumatrope” augment those sensations quite nicely.

At the end of the day, Ana Kefr’s latest is a strange little number that contains a lot of good ideas as well as some mish-mashing. This might not appeal to your average Joe Beergut metal-head, but for those of us that want some intelligence and flair with our metal, this may be a good little distraction from the outside world. Though its limited appeal may be too narrow for its own good...