Band:	Burial Clouds
Album:	Last Days Of A Dying World
Style:	Doom metal, Post-metal
Release date:	May 2023

01. Cloudsplitter
02. Beirut Shores
03. Seawall
04. Ether Fields
05. Death, Emperor

A sentiment I find myself thinking quite frequently when writing reviews is ‘this is really well-rounded and mature for a debut album’; the existence of such thoughts implies the expectation that debut records typically emerge as displays of raw potential hindered by imperfections in songwriting, but what’s a good example of such an album? In unrelated news, here’s the debut album of American sludge/post-metal band Burial Clouds.

Last Days Of A Dying World comes to us courtesy of Church Road Records, but this isn’t actually the first collection of music released by Burial Clouds with this title; back in 2021, an instrumental demo with the same name and containing the same tracks was uploaded by the group to YouTube. Since then, the Burial Clouds line-up has been expanded, with the recruitment of a vocalist in the form of Michael Malarkey, who may be more familiar to readers from his television career in the likes of The Vampire Diaries and Westworld. The songs have been re-recorded from the demo, with improved production quality for the instrumental tracks to go with the freshly incorporated vocals, and now, just over 2 years after they were first shared with the world, the definitive version of Last Days Of A Dying World is now available.

Compositionally, sludge metal and post-metal are the genres that come most frequently to mind when listening to this record, but there is more in the album’s DNA; on top of a doom metal presence that is fairly conventional for sludge records, there’s a more intriguing influence from grunge, as well as hints of blues and folk in certain moments that draw parallels with the use of similar sounds by Neurosis. In featuring such stylistic diversity, Burial Clouds avoid releasing a tired retread of an established template, but while I enjoy their relative originality, there are moments in which the songwriting doesn’t quite work for me.

There are songs I enjoy on Last Days Of A Dying World, and ones that I enjoy less; I’ll discuss the latter first so that I can then move onto more positive words. When I mention grunge as an inspiration in the previous paragraph, it’s fairly clear that Alice In Chains have the greatest influence on this record when compared with the other Seattle heavyweights. There are eerie vocal semi-harmonies on “Cloudsplitter” and “Seawall” that have a similar vibe to Staley and Cantrell’s weirder songs, albeit with a gnarlier sludge accompaniment. However, while I like the ideas behind these passages, I find the execution lacking; in “Seawall” in particular, whether because of the performance or just because of inherent issues in the selected vocal phrases, but I consistently found these passages off-putting on playthroughs of the album.

“Seawall” is the shortest song on the record, and in my opinion it’s also the most disjointed; it’s an up-tempo sludgy track, but it lacks somewhat in both intensity and in terms of hooks, despite being comprised of a number of riffs in its 5-minute runtime. It moves between each section with variably natural transitions, but with the exception of a lively early Mastodon-esque ending, little here works for me. Opening track “Cloudsplitter” is more successful in its use of the Alice In Chains harmonies, but they’re still a bit ‘off’; in contrast, I find this song overall to be somewhat more satisfying than “Seawall” with its more patient evolution, particularly when it temporarily descends into dirge-like doom midway through and later when it weaves subtle melodic twang into its climactic riff. I feel like “Cloudsplitter” is a great example of a song that fits the bill of what I expect in an ‘average’ debut record; there’s some really solid passages, and I can hear the good ideas in the other sections, but it’s not quite consistently satisfying enough for me to fully get on board with.

Now, onto the songs that I am vibing more with. The first one is “Beirut Shores”, and the appeal to me of this song is pretty easy to explain: I love Wayfarer. There’s not actually any black metal of note in “Beirut Shores”, but the guitarwork on this song is far closer to that trademark Western twang of Wayfarer’s material than that of other Western-themed black metal bands such as Dark Watcher or Untamed Land. I don’t know whether Burial Clouds are drawing their influence from Wayfarer or from whichever musical acts inspired the Coloradans, but the similarity is hard to overlook. Nevertheless, the slack, understated energy of this song is easy to enjoy, and it also shows the strengths of Malarkey’s clean singing far more favourably than the two tracks either side of it on the album; he possesses a really pleasant bluesy tone, singing with presence in his voice even when opting for a more subdued approach. It’s nicely contrasted by some harsher roars later on as “Beirut Shores” becomes more metallic.

“Beirut Shores” appeals to me in part due to its similarity to a band I already like; the other standout song here, “Ether Fields”, also slightly reminds me of a different band I enjoy, although in this instance I feel the comparisons I’m drawing to Neurosis are more surface-level. The deeper, Steve Von Till-esque folk feel to some of the vocals here, and the clear post-rock elements, do give me a slight The Eye Of Every Storm vibe, but the post-rock in this instance feels more in line with the output of more indie/emo-oriented acts, while the song still descends to fierce sludgy depths in certain moments. It’s a really distinctive-sounding and well-constructed song, and arguably represents Burial Clouds at their most inspired on this record.

I’m not especially enamoured with Last Days Of A Dying World; there’s a few too many moments here that I feel detract from the record, or that I struggle to feel strongly about either way. However, I hear promise in the weaker songs, which is backed up by the quality of the stronger tracks here. Malarkey makes for a good frontman with a solid vocal range across clean and extreme styles, and I imagine working on material that is written from the start with his vocals in mind will help with converting the raw potential of this debut into something more accomplished.