my expectations for the new pallbearer album were pretty high. the guys put out two absolute flawless full length records and another two nice demo/e.p. releases, so they had no other chance but to come up with another milestone of doom metal. i waited eagerly for pre-orders to go live and was ready to put some extra cash towards a nice u.s. edition from their north american label profound lore. when i stepped into the game the pre-orders went live for about two hours.
in that time frame all the sweet colour editions were fucking gone. two starburst colour-ways were among them and i screamed to the heavens for being too slow. the band signed a european record deal with nuclear blast and so i settled with a european version. i opted for the white vinyl. not really satisfying when i knew that there were much cooler stuff around but still better than the gold version (the second colour-way from nuclear blast) and much cheaper indeed, considering shipping rates.
when my copy arrived together with the emmure record and i opened the seal, i was surprised and quite puzzled as to what was staring back at me. through the centre holes of the dust sleeves i could see a somewhat off-white colour peeking through. i pulled the record from the sleeve and a very light blue marble version saw the light of day. wow, this looked amazing. the pictures doesn't really do the real look justice but believe me, it's pretty cool. when i saw a picture of the u.s. editions via the profound lore instagram page the other day, suddenly i felt like i had one of the coolest versions because they don't really look quite as cool as their descriptions implied.
so enough of all this colour gibberish talk. what does the actual album sound like? - you might ask. well, it's a damn good album from these american doomsters. the only thing which halts me from going through the roof with praise, is the first side of the double lp set. two of three songs are a bit of lame, not particularly bad but not really gripping. we'll see, maybe they will grow on me. the rest is pure doom gold. pallbearer knows how to combine epic metal melodies with lovely leads and crushing, slow heaviness. stunning artwork on top. lovely! 300 copies made. nuclear blast. 2017.
