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Album Details

• Artist: Inter Arma
• Album: Sky Burial
• Label: Relapse Records
• Year of Release: 2013
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: solitaryman on 2013-03-12

Let the buyer beware. Or, in the case of us esteemed and priviledged music reviewers, let the legal downloader beware.

A necessary thought to keep actively spinning through one's grey matter when reading a band's press kit/bio. Inter Arma seemingly set out to draw me in with a simple handful of descriptors; words such as "doom", psychadelic sludge", "grind" and "black metal", in particular. Despite never having heard of the band prior, and despite the little aforementioned precaution on the tip of my tongue, I dove into Sky Burial like a child dives into the biggest Christmas present under the tree. And was I met with something to match the lofty expectations?



Yes. No. I'm still not sure, days and dozens of spins later. This 5-piece outfit certainly combines about 20 different genres, subgenres and variations of subgenres (oh god I've gone cross-eyed) into about an hour's worth of meaty, earthy metal. Rich, organic and thriving off of a smooth/rough duality, Sky Burial has more substance within its 8 tracks than many bands muster in a lifetime. The true name of the game for Inter Arma is crescendo-building; everything that isn't a song's absolute peak seems to work only to make that inevitable finish that much bigger. Even the album's softer acoustic interludes work in this manner, but also inject a very welcome alternative to the lengthy core tracks. "The Survival Fires" introduces me to a band that wields doom metal like seasoned pros, and structures songs in a manner that would make the likes of Godspeed You! Black Emperor smile whilst staring down at their instruments. The guitars are a huddled mass of low, sludgy riffs and sharper counterpoints. The bass is a camoflagued drone enriching walls of monolithic percussion, the latter being my favorite aspect of my favorite moments of Sky Burial. After a haunting and moving interlude, "The Long Road Home" goes and absolutely kills the rest of the album by being the best of the bunch. Chock full of enticing melodies and written with the keenest possible sense of build, climb, feign retreat, full speed ahead. If the rest of the album managed to hold up, you'd see this one in 9 months on my year-end list for sure.


But it doesn't quite hold up. Sadly, most of Sky Burial is well envisioned but poorly executed. Certain tracks are bogged down by repetition (Destroyer, Westward) or are simply meandering and meaningless ('sblood). The title track has a section that sounds like pure Mastodon worship, managing to close the record off on a very satisfactory note. Still, a little more spit and polish would have elevated Sky Burial up and out of the atmosphere of "not bad, not brilliant".


On the strength of about 30 mintues of pure musical ingenuity, however, I still strongly recommend Sky Burial to...well, anyone who digs post-rock, southern doom/stoner metal and the idea of combining them. The resulting brew is potent, but would have been better suited by omitting an ingredient or two.

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