### After The Burial: Rareform

#### 14/06/10 || Desert Eagle

Picture, with your ears, a more accessible Meshuggah. That is After the Burial. They might have some core-ish elements but it is mostly just crazy riff after crazy riff. Apparently they got a new singer and re-recorded this album but fuck that. The original singer is so much better that it is just ridiculous that they replaced him.

Anyways, that just brings me to my biggest gripe with this album. The production. The drums are shit. They sound flat and kind of bland. It is easy enough to overlook though. Also, since After the Burial play eight string guitars, the guitar sound can get kind of muddy. This is still a minor complaint though.

Muddy sound aside, the guitar-playing on this album is fantastic. They are just so tight and so heavy that it is almost impossible to dislike. Listen to “Cursing akhenaten” and tell me that whole intro is not awesome. You will not be able to do this! Unless you can. Then, uh, fuck you!

So I guess I might as well go into the vocals since I made such a big deal over the change. Basically, the singer on the original just kind of growled and screamed. The new guy does his best tough-guy hardcore voice and it just sounds weak. Now it’s not to say the original dude is awesome, but he sure seems that way compared to the new singer. I guess that is kind of irrelevant though.

I digress. This is yet another album that I’ve reviewed that I feel people will ignore because the scene they are in. Yeah they kind of get lumped in with the whole deathcore crowd but that doesn’t really seem like an apt description. What I’d call them though? Shoot I don’t know; I got out of the whole genre-defining thing years back. No, really I just can’t think of a good genre for them. So let me know, what do you think?

I like doing lists of songs now so here are my favorites: “Cursing akhenaten”, “Berzerker”, “Aspiration”. Those should give you a good idea of what After the Burial are about.

- Information
- Released: 2008
- Label: Sumerian Records
- Website: After the Burial MySpace
- Band
- Grant Luoma: vocals
- Justin Lowe: guitars
- Trent Hafdahl: guitar
- Lerichard Foral: bass
- Dan Carle: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Berzerker
- 02. Drifts
- 03. Cursing akhenaten
- 04. Rareform
- 05. Aspiration
- 06. The fractal effect
- 07. Ometh
- 08. A vicious reforming of features