Buried Inside Reap the Spoils
Tradition and fascist madman/$20 bill model Andrew Jackson hold that the spoils go to the victor, and it seems Ottawa‘s intensely atmospheric metallers Buried Inside agree; new album Spoils of Failure (Relapse Records) is a dark, bleak and oppressive work the emphasis of which seems to be on embodying the titular failure in a bizarrely successful way. Another longtime dictum is that artists can never succeed, only fail better. If that’s the case — and I wholeheartedly believe it is — then Buried Inside fail pretty damn well here.
A lyrical treatise focused on the flaws of the society which is apparently crumbling all around us more every day, Spoils of Failure provides the kind of vague and poetic analysis that could either be brilliant or pointless depending on how much thought you want to put into reading it. That’s not to call the lyrics dumb, if anything they’re over-intellectualized, but as much of a focus as there is on verbiage, you can enjoy the record without knowing the words. Hell, I did until I looked at the liner notes. It can happen.
There are no song titles, which seems like a mistake given the time and effort put into words otherwise. Seriously, you’re going to take the time to end your printed lyrics with quotes from Thorstein Veblen, Jeffrey Reiman and W.H. Auden (someone in this band is getting a Ph.D.) to help express your ideas and then miss out on probably the most effective chance to tell people what you’re talking about? That doesn’t make any sense. Even if the band put “I: Insert Name Here” to emphasize that these are chapters or movements in a larger work, it would do more than the “I,” “II,” “III,” etc. titling to make each song and thus the whole work stand out. An opportunity missed.
Musically, because this is an album review after all, Buried Inside have further developed the post-metal approach seen on 2005’s Chronoclast, which is fine except for the fact that their genre has gone from populated by a couple interesting bands taking different avenues on an approach pioneered by Isis in the wake of Neurosis to an overflowing pool of mediocrity. They do well enough with it though, much aided by the production job of Converge‘s Kurt Ballou, who brings a biting edge to the guitars that might be lost had the band gone with, say, Sanford Parker, whose focus on overall sonic largess might lose some of this distinct aggression in the mix. They work well when they’re angry, and they sound angry here.
The larger issue is one of timing. It’s been four full years since Chronoclast was released, and if Buried Inside are looking to build any kind of momentum, that’s not really the way to do it. Plus, with that kind of space between offerings, it’s not unreasonable to have expected more growth than we’re presented with on Spoils of Failure, which still fits very much in the vein of the darker school of b-list post-metal, alongside Mouth of the Architect or a more depressive Rosetta.
That said, the full sound Buried Inside present adds a blackened-sky ambience well suited to the lyrical doomsaying and though they may not be the most groundbreaking band on the planet, pissed off doom heads and/or smartypants metallers could do a lot worse than checking out Spoils of Failure. Hopefully it’s not another four years before we hear them try, try again.
Tags: Bands who sound like Neurosis, Buried Inside, Relapse
