Forgotten Days

With Forgotten Days, the band don’t so much extend the sprawling prog-laced epics of the previous album as blend them into tighter, more direct tunes that feel very appropriate for the moods of this long, fractious year: at times ornery, restless and deeply sorrowful.

These eight songs grapple candidly with [family loss], but, like the music itself, the words don’t wallow. Instead, Pallbearer use these tragedies to revel in being alive, or to answer the “gnawing doubts that I ever learned to live.”

Forgotten Days is the album that will likely unite all Pallbearer fans. Its return-to-roots aesthetic is planted in a physical base that carries the band's dark, progressive doom into a new era.

There’s nothing too out there on Forgotten Days – the ’80s synth of the closing Caledonia probably the biggest surprise, but a welcome one: a playful take on the pain of the past – and all the tracks are solid, with any experimentation woven tightly around Pallbearer’s doom roots. This is the sound of a genre being refreshed, and of a band making it entirely their own.

Their fourth album takes yet more detours, but without ever losing sight of the path. Devotees of lead-heavy riffs will be spoilt by the title track and Rites Of Passage, and the pace never exceeds sluggish.

Though not quite the standout the band promises early on, it does end things on a mournful yet triumphant note. It caps off one of Pallbearer's most approachable statements to date, where they bring new life to their usual approach as they stick to their core sound.