Sarin – Burial Dream

January 17, 2015 • self-released

I haven't really been listening to a ton of sludge metal lately. I still love the genre but it seems like there's less and less coming out each year that really piques my interest. But now and again I'll stumble on a band that rekindles my faith a little and reminds me why I love the genre so much. Recently it's been Sarin, whose 2013 EP House of Leaves I really enjoyed (but never covered). Their first full-length is finally out and I couldn't be happier.

There's a pretty blatant debt owed to early–mid Isis, and maybe Pelican and Godflesh, on a lot of these tracks—at points I feel like the music could have been ripped straight from Isis' Oceanic—although I bring this up in the most positive light possible. Sarin pulls off a similar combination of slow, churning, clean-guitar buildups and huge, heavy, crunchy, pounding riffs; even the vocalists sound very similar. Maybe it's just my personal love for the atmospheric sludge style (and the fact that I do miss Isis somewhat) but the band knows what they're doing and they've gotten fantastic at it.

Take, for instance, the intro to "Monograph". Slow—plodding, almost—drums, echoing clean guitars, pretty typical stuff. But it has this really nice melodic aspect to it (probably has something to do with the major key) that lulls you in, so when the heavy guitars kick on two minutes in, still with the excellent melody and emotional resonance, it's just an awesome experience. They take the genre's natural tendency towards repetition and make it work in their favor really well; the song shifts into a more sinister minor key by the end but you barely notice as it goes. "Reverse Mirror" does something kind of similar, but uses that kind of interplay and buildup to conclude the album in a very satisfying way.

I suppose the fact that this album does feel a bit derivative will probably keep it from being as appealing as it could to some people. I love this album anyway, so I don't really care; Sarin has more than proven themselves to me what they're capable of. Great, great stuff.