Heartless

Pallbearer are one of those bands that I never expected to like as much as I did. I wasn't really that into doom metal when their album Foundations of Burden came out in the middle of 2014 - I'd only just begun listening to Deafheaven, and my journey into the deeper parts of metal, as it were, hadn't quite hit full swing. But a fateful car ride came along, and my friend Austin (arguably Pallbearer's biggest fan since Sorrow and Extinction, and presumably until the heat death of the universe) played "Worlds Apart" when it was his turn with the aux cord.

In a word, I was crushed. I was crushed by how uncompromisingly heavy the song was, I was crushed by the complexity of its ten-plus minute run, and I was most crushed by how heart-rending the melodies were - vocal, guitar, what have you. I quickly became enamored with the song and its corresponding album, which remained in my car's CD player for nearly a year after I burned a copy.

On the surface, Heartless is very similar to its predecessor. It's heavy as hell, heartfelt, and not a touch overproduced. But there's something different about this album. For one, it's Pallbearer's fastest album yet, as lead single "Thorns" is quick to display with its thundering, atonal guitars that trample the listener like a musical stampede. "Cruel Road" chugs along with rapid-fire palm-muting and some of the most expressive, honest, and powerful vocal delivery in Pallbearer's catalog. I'm not sure who brought up the idea of shouted vocals for this album, but whoever did, thank you. We all love Brett's voice and melodies, but there's nothing wrong with working outside your premade box to create something surprising for the listener.

As far as the song structures themselves go, they are actually quite a bit more complex than on either of Pallbearer's previous two full-length efforts; there's honestly not that much repetition to be found save for a few spots on the album, so if there's a particular riff that you're not 100% in love with, fear not - it'll probably be gone within a minute at the absolute most, never to be reprised again. Synthesizers even pop in on a track or two, but only as a garnish - a bit like putting Sriracha on an already-spicy dish; it's really less for making a big change, more for just adding a bit of extra flavor. To be honest, there's so much variety to the songwriting and structuring that calling this album simply a doom record seems a little reductive. The opening of "Dancing in Madness" recalls 70's progressive rock, and "Cruel Road" pushes the band into straight sludge metal territory. There's a whole lot going on in these tracks, is what I'm trying to convey here.

For two, it's also Pallbearer's most lyrically pointed effort yet; while Foundations and Sorrow were mostly concerned with grand concepts like the balance between light & dark and death itself, Heartless treads much closer to reality. "Thorns" seems to very subtly reference life as a post-9/11 adult, with lyrics like These thorns are all I can feel/Fragmented shards of a god/I leave a memory/Better left scattered/In another life and Can't walk away/From atonement/Was it worth it all/And can we ever find our way back home, while "A Plea for Understanding" is...well, a plea for understanding. Specifically, it seems, an understanding of the narrator's depression and how it makes seemingly simple things difficult to accomplish: Anger, fear, and regret keep the darkness at hand/But these feelings are real/All I ask, won't you please understand; Try to forget the past/But nothing ever changes/Try to understand/But nothing ever changes/Try to lose myself/But nothing ever changes/Try to love myself/But nothing ever changes; and the chorus' refrain of I just want to give to you/All that you have given me/My searching heart/Cries for this/This thing I can't grasp/A love somewhere within all seem to point unflichingly toward someone struggling with the deepest recesses of their own mind.

For three, the album was recorded by the band themselves to two-inch analog tape in their hometown. While this does result in a few clips here and there (specifically, it seems, when drummer Mark Lierly hits especially hard or a solo comes into play), it also results in the album sounding so visceral and raw that it honestly blew me away a little bit when I first listened to the album in one sitting. Foundations definitely was cleaner-sounding, and Sorrow was very lushly- and well-produced, but neither album was anywhere near as punchy and powerful as Heartless is, even in its weaker technical moments - which, thank Christ, are few and far between, and aren't significant enough to ruin the overall experience of the album (like some bands I know and love dearly despite this shortcoming - *cough cough* Bongripper *cough cough*).

Heartless, while certainly not a perfect album, comes shockingly fucking close. If the Arkansas lads can dream up another album anything like this in emotional weight and songwriting complexity and have said hypothetical album be as cleanly recorded as Foundations and as densely produced as Sorrow, I will eat my fucking shorts. Holy shit.

At any rate, that's enough of the review. Go listen to it, and then, once you're done, listen to it again. And again. And maybe one more time after that. Catch all the complexities; read along with the lyrics; headbang along to the riffs and air-guitar along to the solos; make your neighbors call the cops on you and embarrass yourself in traffic; then, once you're done, admit to yourself that if ever there was a doom metal band that deserved to break into the mainstream and make unbelievable shitloads of money for the rest of their lives, admit that that band is Pallbearer.