post metal

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The Burial Choir is a mysterious new rock band out of Wisconsin. Outside of a smattering of cryptic Facebook updates and studio photographs, it’s a project cloaked in secrecy. But in an age of social media oversharing, that’s a blessing: on their debut EP, less is certainly more. Without any outside expectations to color it in one way or another, and a run time of just 3 songs spanning 19 minutes, the only legs it has to stand on are the ones the music creates for itself.

And thankfully, those merits are many. Opening track “The Devil Laughs At Us All” kicks things off in chilling fashion, with chiming church bells and ascending vocals blending together to lure you in, before exploding into a stomping stoner metal groove. It manages to walk the fine line of hammering away at its main riff without letting it overstay its welcome, inserting just enough layers to keep things fresh while also leaving room for its dark vocal melodies to carry the rest.

Elswhere, “Archibald Beechcroft” positions itself as both the centerpiece of the EP and its closing track. This track is a nearly 9 minute long journey that works its way through a chiming, siren-like intro guitar lead and later into massive, lumbering post-metal riffs akin to ISIS and Russian Circles, all with the swagger and groove of Queens of the Stone Age at their best.

If you like dark, moody music with a touch of aggression and plenty of power, then The Burial Choir is a project you need to check out immediately. It’s music out to please no one but itself, and because of that, becomes something that will please a wide range of music fans. It’s time to get buried.

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2014 was a big year for Cloudkicker. Hot off the heels of the project’s fourth studio album, Subsume, Cloudkicker had the opportunity to become a real band and tour the country thanks to Intronaut. This was a rare tour, as the ‘band’ is actually the one-man project of Ben Sharp. Billed alongside Intronaut and Tesseract, Cloudkicker was suddenly in front of a lot more eyes and ears. So it’s not surprising that the notoriously private musician all but disappeared into the ether after the tour, as if decompressing.

And that’s what Little Histories is – the sound of a comedown after a huge event. Everything here is stripped back from its predecessor, Subsume, trading the dense layering and huge distorted cinematics of that album for a more sludgy, minimalist production. It sounds like the aftermath of that record, mostly drifting along with clean, reverb-rich guitars and occasionally stumbling into a heavier, fuzzed-out riff. But for the most part, Little Histories is more meditative and mild-mannered, pleasantly blurring the line between post-rock and post-metal.

However, with this restraint, Cloudkicker’s sense of musical adventurousness is muted. If you’ve been listening to any of his material since 2010’s Beacons, this EP probably won’t surprise you: all the hallmarks of his sound since then are on full display, nothing more, nothing less. There is a flash of experimentation with the vocoded vocals on Sky Guide (which turns out to be one of the most interesting and unique pieces in his catalog, and echoes God is an Astronaut), though otherwise those moments are few and far between. But for an artist like Ben Sharp, these little diversions are necessary, because they allow him to further explore a sound without the worry of reinvention. Sometimes it’s nice to lower the gear and wander the scenic route, and that’s exactly what Little Histories does.

As always, you can get all of Cloudkicker’s music for pay what you want pricing over at http://cloudkickermusic.com/.

KEY TRACKS: Sky Guide, Digital Lightning

The Burial Choir – The Burial Choir [2017]

Cloudkicker – Little Histories [EP] (2014)