Forgotten Days

Album review

In the 2010s, Pallbearer gave doom metal a new face. The Little Rock, Arkansas, band emerged in 2012 with a lauded debut, Sorrow and Extinction, that immediately placed them in the upper echelon of broiling riff lords. It was a classic doom record through and through (five songs clocking in at 48 minutes, beginning with a 12-minute opener) but 2014's Foundations of Burden and 2017's Heartless pushed their sound into more melodic and proggy territory, respectively. Given their technical proficiency and frontman Brett Campbell's soaring voice—which sounds like a cross between Ozzy Osbourne and Mastodon's Brann Dailor—their aspirations to break beyond the ceiling of their root genre made sense, and those records were roundly praised by critics and fans alike. On their fourth album and first since jumping from the tastemaking label Profound Lore to the career-securing institution Nuclear Blast, Pallbearer have taken a venn diagram approach to their discography.

Forgotten Days is a return to the primitive heaviness of their debut that doesn't forego the grand elements they introduced on their last two projects. The title track opener is perhaps the purest distillation of the Pallbearer sound: a mountainous yet chuggy riff, Campbell's anthemic belt, and a righteously noisy guitar solo. The 12-minute centerpiece "Silver Wings" is a trudging doom track with candlelit leads that add a touch of brightness to an otherwise cavernous affair. It features two epic solos, the latter congealing with beaming synths that seem to swoop in and out of the darkness. It might be the most impressive song on the record, but the two tracks that follow are the most satisfying. The sludgy riff in "The Quicksand Existing" has a Sabbath-like crunch that bolsters a truly ripping solo (the album's best), and the song transitions seamlessly into the bludgeoning "Vengeance and Ruination," which features a positively evil lead lick.

Pallbearer are a doom band at their core, so they always sound the most locked-in when the low and slow riffs drag due to their sheer weight. However, their most interesting moments arrive when they add melodic and/or virtuosic flair on top of their earthy heaviness—the surprisingly hooky and gotchi outro track, "Caledonia," is a fascinating and memorable way to go out. Forgotten Days takes a few tracks to pick up, but on the whole it's the most comprehensive and finely-tuned Pallbearer record to date. © Eli Enis/Qobuz