Burial of the Sad

Good god, the saw-toothed guitar character present on this album is quite...something. This is indeed true to the tag "Blackened doom metal" and while I imagine that sort of pairing to deliver in the vein of Katatonia's sole masterclass in invention, "Dance of December Souls", Tristitia do not seem to wanna trouble themselves with any of that goodness. Instead they carve out a mean and intense wall that's heavy on the cavernous leads of the more melodic sides of black metal with the vague tropes of the similarly very vague and ill-defined "gothic metal" subgenre.

Too bad, there isn't much of a palpable atmosphere to douse oneself in. But what they lack in atmosphere, they make up for with creative riffing that seems to be calculated to sound ancient and grasping at the centuries. "Dragged To The Cross" is the prime example of this nuance playing out sublimely. The vocals run the gamut from eerie to downright hilarious. It's that dude from Pagan Rites so I don't know how much forethought went into that choice. But he makes the thicker structures (like "Twice the Bleeding") all the more menacing. On the sparser moments as on "River of the Cross" he is fucking ridiculous to the utmost degree. Luis Galvez' guitar work is what fleshes out the majority of "Burial of the Sad" and he is a master at heaping seething melodies atop each other and at masterful wonky keyboard layering. It works thoroughly for Tristitia in this weird space they occupy where Type O Negative is forced to shake hands with Opera IX while the skin of Amorphis is laced with boils.

"Autumn Leaves" and "Fallen Winter Skies" are two other stand-outs with the latter really dragging out the screechy nature of the band - vile black metal slowed down 101, kids. The leads are stunningly well placed and the cold production will leave you shivering. It does create its own atmosphere after all but a general appraisal of "Burial Of The Sad" reveals a work that is mostly stitched together as opposed to finely woven. That it maintains coherence regardless is a testament to this band's long-standing potential. Also, Triptykon called and they want "Winter Dead" back, you thieves lol.