Music

Pallbearer playing ahead of new disc

Little Rock doom metal band Pallbearer — Brett Campbell (from left), Mark Lierly, Joseph D. Rowland and Devin Holt — will play Rev Room on Wednesday. Their new album, Heartless, will be released Friday.
Little Rock doom metal band Pallbearer — Brett Campbell (from left), Mark Lierly, Joseph D. Rowland and Devin Holt — will play Rev Room on Wednesday. Their new album, Heartless, will be released Friday.

Heartless, the new album from Little Rock doom metal heroes Pallbearer, is unleashed Friday, but the quartet will bring the heaviness to the Rev Room for its hometown fans Wednesday.

Sumokem, Colour Design and Auric will open the show.

Pallbearer

Opening acts: Sumokem, Colour Design, Auric

8 p.m. Wednesday, Rev Room, 300 President Clinton Ave., Little Rock

Admission: $12-15

(501) 823-0090

revroom.com

The gig kicks off the first round of what will likely become a long stretch of touring for the critically acclaimed band, which includes Brett Campbell (vocals, guitar), Joseph D. Rowland (bass, vocals), Devin Holt (guitar, vocals) and Mark Lierly (drums).

"We're doing a short run of U.S. shows around the album release, but then we leave directly from that to tour the U.K. and Europe," says Rowland from Brooklyn, N.Y., where he has lived for the past couple of years.

Pallbearer made an instant impact with its first full-length record, the bludgeoning Sorrow and Extinction, in 2012. Pitchfork.com named it a Best New Music release and even National Public Radio gave it love. Foundations of Burden, the 2014 follow-up, was just as acclaimed.

With Heartless, the band expands its bruising, sludgy grind and progressive-rock leanings naturally, exploring more melodic tendencies while retaining its heaviness, and has already picked up accolades for early tracks off the album from Rollingstone.com, Pitchfork.com and others.

Two cover songs from Fear & Fury, a three-song EP from 2016, were recorded at Fellowship Hall Sound in Little Rock and the band returned there to work on Heartless, which, like the earlier albums, is being released by Canada's Profound Lore Records.

"We went in really early last year and worked with [engineer] Jason [Weinheimer] on tracking those two covers as a sort of trial run," Rowland says. "We wanted to get a feel if that would be the right choice to do the full-length there. Obviously, it was. It's a really relaxing place to track an album."

The result, produced by the band, is a record without the endless stacks of guitar that marked Foundations of Burden but still sounds just as full and ambitious.

"We decided that we probably put a little too much emphasis on layering the guitars on Foundations," Rowland says. Indeed, Foundations of Burden producer Billy Anderson, the man behind the board for bands like Swans, The Melvins, Neurosis, Mr. Bungle and others, told Pallbearer that their album had more layers of guitar than any other record he'd ever been involved with.

"The end result is that it was really hard to mix," Rowland says.

The band wasn't up for that again. "In the long run we decided that we could deal with a more natural sound that had more clarity and presence to it, so we stripped down the process."

All that adds up to a more organic feel among the seven tracks on the hourlong Heartless.

"It was recorded all analog to tape and with a minimal amount of guitar layering," Rowland says. "We wanted it to sound really big and spacious, but not in the same way Foundations did."

Mission accomplished. On tracks like "I Saw the End" and the crunchy, adventurous "Thorns," the patented Pallbearer sound -- complex arrangements, thoughtful guitar solos, Lierly's authoritative drumming and Campbell's soaring vocals -- is on full display.

With its title and sometimes bleak sound, the LP is a reflection of these times, the band says.

"Instead of staring into the void -- both above and within -- Heartless concentrates its power on a grim reality," reads a statement from the group. "Our lives, our homes and our world are all plumbing the depths of utter darkness, as we seek to find any shred of hope we can."

"Heartlessness is something we feel is a pervading sentiment in the world right now," Rowland says of the record's theme. "People are caught up in their own machinations, especially people who are in positions of power and authority, but I don't want to give too much away before people get a chance to read the lyrics."

Style on 03/21/2017

Upcoming Events