Burial Invocation
Rituals Of The Grotesque
6.4
Burial Invocation is a five-piece death metal band from Turkey. As I listened to this, their debut EP, I couldn’t help but think about how that part of the world is the butt of many a pop culture joke for being slightly behind the times. For example, in the Family Guy episode entitled “Road to Europe,” we see a father telling his son, “I am sick of you tooling around the village . . . blasting your 1980's American rock music that we got here last week.” Instead of 1980's American rock music, though, we’re dealing with 1990's American/Swedish-style death metal. Rituals of the Grotesque sounds like it was pulled directly from that era, so much so that you may start to wonder if it’s some lost recording rather than a 2010 release. Adding to that is the fact that this is being made available on cassette (via Skeleton Plague Records) as well as the modern CD format.
As you might expect, there is absolutely nothing new here; just some very satisfying Obituary-meets-Entombed death metal. As one who tends to prefer the classic death metal style over the more modern style, that’s just fine. There’s only so much widdly-widdly wankery that a person can take. Sometimes, you just want to hear the slow, heavy verses leading into double-bass/blast beat choruses, pounding at your eardrums and penetrating the darkest parts of your psyche – which is exactly what these four tracks provide. For proof, look no farther than “Haunted Crypts of the Ancient Dead,” a behemoth of a dirge that creeps along, stalks you, and lashes out without so much as a warning.
I’m sure that there are other bands doing what Burial Invocation is, but Rituals of the Grotesque is what landed on my desk and captured my attention. Its kind of ironic that this appeared right in the middle of my death metal renaissance. Who would have thought that a band from Turkey would be a factor in reminding me why I ever liked the genre in the first place?
