Deep Cuts #11: Bury Your Dead – S/T
In defense of an eponymous sleeper and the ultimate workout record.
Artist: Bury Your Dead
Title: Bury Your Dead
Release: March 18th, 2008
Label: Victory Records
Listen here: Spotify | Youtube
In my review of Birmingham progressive metalcore outfit ERRA’s latest record (it’s really good, check it out), I mapped out my feelings on why certain bands choose to go down the “self-titled” route when naming a new album:
“Self-titled records typically serve as cautionary artifacts in the realm of heavy music. In most cases, they act as a form of introduction—the defining statement for a young group at the beginning of their burgeoning career, loudly declaring themselves to the world: ‘This is who we are, and this is what we do.’
Alternatively, the eponymous album might also serve as a form of course correction for an established outfit, either reaffirming their chosen genre and sonic wheelhouse or representing an artistic pivot and fork in the musical road.”
For Boston bruisers Bury Your Dead, the release of their self-titled fourth LP in 2008 is very much a case of the latter. This desire to gently pivot and retool their heavy beatdown sound, in light of an endless cavalcade of member exits and line-up changes, made for—in my humble opinion—their best album to date.
Looking at the band’s Wikipedia page (yes, I am in fact a music journalist, thank you for asking), we can see how an album like Bury Your Dead might come into being. In the seven years between their founding and the release of their fourth LP in early 2008, the band had already gone through 18(!) members, three of which were vocalists and in the space of six months no less.
With the exit of long-time frontman Matt Bruso, who featured on 2004’s Cover Your Tracks, 2006’s Beauty and the Breakdown (an all-time excellent title for the genre), and was present for much of the band’s breakout in the early 2000s, Bury Your Dead turned to a left-of-centre source as his replacement: ex-I Killed The Prom Queen vocalist, Australian national, and all-round desmond, Michael Crafter.
This stint, however, was a short-lived one, with Crafter bailing on the band only months into his first US tour and promptly returning home for good. While it was certainly an oddity of scene gossip at the time, I do remember wondering what it would sound like to hear Crafter’s unique voice over the top of some pit-worthy mayhem and, thanks to the magical reach of YouTube, now we know:
With Crafter out of the picture, Bury Your Dead quickly found his semi-permanent replacement in former Cassius vocalist Myke Terry (now of Volumes), bringing us to the formidable line-up for the release of Bury Your Dead: Terry on lead vocals, guitarists Brendan “Slim” MacDonald and Eric Ellis, bassist Aaron “Bubble” Patrick, and drummer Mark Castillo.
Now for the confessional part of this retrospective: I fucking love this record. I listen to it at least once a month, and it has a very healthy rotation on my “PUNCH SHIT” workout playlist. It’s very, very sick. My reasoning for this adoration is two-fold. First, it’s eleven tracks done in a tight 33-minutes, offering up pretty much all killer with zero filler. And second, it’s the epitome of that age-old, PR yardstick “heavy but also melodic.”
Much like their peers in Killswitch Engage at the time, Bury Your Dead actually managed to do the damn thing on this record, cracking the cheat code for writing radio-friendly accessibility without sacrificing energy or their core sound.
I’m amazed at how this album is frequently left out of discussions surrounding Bury Your Dead and their legacy within metalcore and heavy music in general, as it’s often overlooked by fans for the well-loved but rather one-note albums of the early Bruso-helmed catalogue.
Album opener “Sympathy Orchestra” starts off unassuming enough: pneumatic down-tuned chugs, whipcrack snare hits, ominous bass thrum, and Terry’s commanding bark. But it only takes that first minute for things to get a little weird. MacDonald and Ellis unfurl these curious, serpentine grooves reminiscent of Fear Factory or Sepultura and when Terry launches into the track’s chorus, he pairs a midrange sing-scream refrain with a soaring lead riff to great effect.
Similarly on the two-step inducing “Hands to Hide The Shame,” things feel familiar yet strange. The quintet picks up the tempo to crank out a sub-three-minute rager where Castillo’s furious double kick is the real star, blitzing through the track like a demented jackhammer. Terry keeps pace though, with his rapid verses funnelling into another super catchy chorus punctuated by gruff backing shouts.
Bury Your Dead of old this is not. The electronic glitches of Beauty and the Breakdown are present once again, yet heightened and more prominent this time around courtesy of returning producer Jason Suecof (Chimaira, DevilDriver, All That Remains). And sure, much of it is still essentially one giant breakdown, so there’s that, but there’s also a dark thematic undertone and melodic slickness to the presentation here that makes it hit in a new and compelling way.
While I was listening to the record for this piece and thinking through my attachment to it, I remembered that I interviewed Bubble way, way back in the neverland of 2009 on the eve of the band’s first Australian tour. It was for a now-defunct, local street press magazine (remember those?), so there’s no link here for posterity’s sake but you’ll just have to trust me on this. Here’s the quote:
“I’m at this point in my life now, where when I listen to a record, I just wanna be able to rock out to it. I don’t wanna have to figure it out or listen to 3000 little parts. I just want to put it in and know what I’m going to get straight away. It’s a lot like pop music; where you put in the CD, and then you’re off and jamming straight away. Just put it in and party!”
And I think this is the logic that makes Bury Your Dead click in my head. From hardcore kids posturing as not-so wannabe gangs and moshing each other to death, to slightly older adults, touring and playing shows to thousands of fans, it makes sense that Bubble & Co wanted to streamline what they do, making it more immediate, more efficient, and instantly connectable to new audiences.
Enter “Fever Dream,” the LP’s lead single and undeniable heavy music banger. It’s easily one of the band’s best-ever songs with a truly monstrous hook, vocal overlays, and a sublime lead groove tailor-made for subliminal head-banging. Composition wise, the track also represents—for me anyway—the ideal synthesis of hardcore fury with stadium metal. There’s just enough bite and edge for the pit but plenty of bounce for the fans in the stands.
The rest of the record powers through this synthesis with confidence and style with pounding rhythms and flashy grooves (“Angel with a Dirty Face”; “A Devil’s Ransom”; “Fool’s Gold”), heavy staccato ‘car mosh’ moments (“Womb Disease”; “Disposably Yours”) and lofty choruses bolstered by melodic guitar work (“Infidel’s Hymn”; “Year One” featuring Mark Tremonti; “Dust to Dust”).
Returning to that interview with Bubble once again, he offers up one more telling tidbit that explains the rationale and creative process behind LP#4:
“Lately we’ve been doing a lot of bigger, metal tours and we’ve been getting all our fans coming to support us which has been really awesome. There’s never once been a moment where we’ve looked at each other and gone, ‘Wow, people just really don’t like this stuff.’ That’s just the way you progress as a band. We never would have been able to write Cover Your Tracks ten times in a row.”
With a tumultuous line-up that was always in flux, Bury Your Dead came out of the desire to be constantly evolving as artists, forever hungry and never stagnant. And even though I didn’t personally enjoy the band’s immediate follow-up, 2009’s nu-metal aping It’s Nothing Personal, I still respect their desire to push the creative envelope and be more than just the mosh band with Tom Cruise song title references.
To wrap things up, here’s my original review of Bury Your Dead from 2009 and another now-defunct local print magazine. It’s bad in a funny way. I’m pretty sure “cymbally” isn’t a real adverb and there’s also a running food metaphor that feels kind of goofy in retrospect, but hey, I was 20, okay? Leave me alone.