ALBUM REVIEW: Trinity Of Deception – Burial Remains

These days everything seems to have something else added. If you grab a cola, it’s got a random fruit flavor thrown in there. Want a brownie? Sure, but it’s a salted caramel one. That tenner-a-glass microbrewery IPA also tastes like a banana. Sometimes, adding a new twist can improve on something (delicious vanilla coke) or totally ruin it (hideous cherry coke) – sometimes you just want to go back to the basics, to remind yourself why the original is so good. Enter Dutch death metal dealers BURIAL REMAINS. 

If BURIAL REMAINS‘ debut Trinity Of Deception is anything to go by, the outfit feel the same way. Seven solid slabs of 90’s worshipping, old-school death metal, without a ‘prog’ or ‘post’ or ‘blackened’ tag in sight. Opener Crucifixion Of The Vanquished starts as the band mean to go on; huge, growling chords and needling tremolo guitars building a wall of tone (seriously, the guitar and bass sound on the record is straight out of the MONOLORD playbook) as drums start to skitter and snake. Barked, guttural growls do battle with pulsating d-beats, burly and muscular riffing barging through and spreading like oil. Whining guitars spiral and solo before the quartet knuckle down into a headlong charge.

They Craw is breathless, punishing drums and mechanical kick work injecting irresistible grooves under the throaty snarls and wailing guitar solos, while Trinity Of Deception‘s title track samples evangelical Christian preaching before driving off at a frantic pace, stuttering around clanging, skipping cymbals and tumbling drum fills. March Of The Undead lives up to its title with a slow, glowering, building riff that mutates into a predatory stalk, vocalist Sven Gross groaning out an extended “Uuuughh!” that channels Mikael Akerfeldt‘s guttural heyday.

Burn With Me throws down slab like single chords and layered vocals, guitars knifing in with tremolo riffing before being chased off by breakneck blast beats, suffused with a filthy gutter groove. Days Of Dread pounds out the d-beat, abating into a mid-paced, cymbal lead stomp before picking up the pace again, ending on a swinging, bassy groove. Closer Tormentor is frantic, whipping away, vocals adding a claustrophobic density before ending on a chugging, triumphant palm-muted climax.

Perhaps the most modern thing about Trinity Of Deception is the production job – clean, bass heavy, it arguably foregrounds the (frankly terrifying) vocals at the expense of guitar heft. That said, the band execute tried and tested genre tropes (anti-Christian imagery, d-beat drums, deep set grooves) with the reverent conviction they deserve. BURIAL REMAINS don’t go in for simple nostalgia, but offer up enough worship of the bad-old-days of 90’s death metal to keep the die-hards happy.

Rating: 7/10

Trinity Of Deception is out now via Transcending Obscurity Records.

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