Burial Oath is a black metal act from the United States. On September 13th, 2024, Burial Oath re-released (remastered) their debut studio album, “Beyond The Vale Of Shadowland,” which was co-released through Morbid and Miserable Records, and Vendetta Records.
Burial Oath, Beyond The Vale Of Shadowlands: This review will evaluate every aspect of the album, from its intricate musical composition to its production. Our analysis will provide valuable insights to help you determine if this album is worth adding to your collection.
The First Three Sins of Beyond The Vale Of Shadowlands
Let’s start by discussing the first three sins of Burial Oath and their album, Beyond The Vale Of Shadowlands.
The First Sin, The Strings/Keys: Features ferocity and scorching guitar work, with dark riffs that are dominant by melodic sections. The Second Sin, The Vocals: Involves dark and snarling vocals that entwine with the guitar work. The Third Sin—The Percussions: Features heavy and diabolical drum work, with thunderous drumbeats that create a pulsating rhythm that will sweep you off your feet.
The Fourth Sin: Overall Discussion: Emerging from the dark and grim mists of the unknown, is the rebirth of Beyond The Vale Of Shadow
The moment the listener presses the play button, the opening piece, The Ritual, greets, but warms the listener with the sound of nature bustling through the music and clean guitar and dark ambience passages, setting for what’s about to come. One continues their journey with the second piece, A Graven Wintertide, and the remaining six pieces provide the listener’s ears and soul with fast and intense black metal.
Burial Oath started as a one-person project in 2015. However, today, Burial Oath comes to us as phantoms of their past selves. In 2017, the band released their first full-length album, Beyond the Vale of the Shadowlands, now in 2024, the album is reborn from the dark and grim mists.
When the listener transcends through the dark and mist of music, one will find that Beyond the Vale of Shadowlands, provides the listener with eight dark songs, spread across thirty minutes. Each song is different, providing the listener with effective changes of moods, tones, tempos, compositions, and instrumentation proved by fruit of art devilmanship. These changes can just happen —but timely place, and at the right moment, for an explanation. In the third song, Coffin Nails, your ears are consumed by the sound of black metal. Then one moment, the listener will be overcome by this brief moment of aura of darkness and doom metal, that lures over the song — this is only the half of it. The riffs have this Black Sabbath feeling and devilmanship within the string work, before transcending back to their dark, heavy and blackened sound. And this is what makes you keep listening, hooked, on your toes.
At the same time, Burial Oath will indulge the listener in scorching guitar work entwined with captivating vocal performances. Thunderous drumbeats create a pulsating rhythm that will sweep you off your feet, and a musical fruit of art that will drag you back to the bands’ darkly mist, where they come from.
Let’s take a moment, and discuss the production value of the album. As the album is reborn from the dark and grim mists of the unknown. The overall sound within the musical spectrum, that the overall sound, production work is floored to perfection and executed. Again, every note, beat, and atmosphere can be heard and make sure that it penetrates the listener’s soul effectively. The effective changes (mentioned before) throughout the thirty minutes,
Burial Oath provides the listener with the execution of this fruit of art composition with the lyrics, music and instrumentation, which are all provided by this fruit of art devilmanship. At the same time and as mentioned before, I’m new to this band, so I’m unaware of what the original version sounds like, but this, for me—is a loud, heavy, dark and forbidden fruit of the art of black metal music with an overall executed sound.
But one thing is for sure, the band and their music are bleak and heavy. At the same time, Burial Oath demonstrates of providing the listener’s ears and their soul with the ferocity of Scandinavian black metal wrapped up in foreboding atmospheric touches of Cascadian-like nature-worship folk/black metal and doom metal. This captures this primal mysticism that is both brutal and arcane in equal measure.
The album ends with the last two songs, Beyond the Vale of Shadowland and Womb of Cosmic Bane. Beyond the Vale of Shadowland greets the listener with a mix of clean acoustic and aggressive, dark black metal instrumentals with drums and guitar. The album concludes with the final piece, Womb of Cosmic Bane, delivering another round of black metal ferocity.
We thank Morbid and Miserable Records for letting us review Burial Oath and his album Beyond The Vale Of Shadowlands. We will wrap it up by discussing the final three sins and concluding the review.
You’re Listening to “Pagan Fire”
PlayThe Last Three Sins
Let’s discuss the last three sins of Burial Oath and their album, Beyond The Vale Of Shadowlands..
The Fifth Sin, The Memorabilia:
For Me, Burial Oath incorporates ingredients from beyond the veil of black metal. While the album is dark and often sorrowing, they vary moods and the intensity of the music so that the album maintains a firm grip from start to finish. The instrumental, composition, and devilmanship performances on the album are all a forbidden fruit of art and a must-listen.
I do have a soft spot for the third piece, Coffin Nails, not for the aura of darkness and doom metal, that lures over the track, but the composition of the piece.
The Sixth Sin, The Artwork:
The album’s artwork is more than just dark and mysterious—it exudes an enigmatic aura, infused with elements of darkness and paganism.
The Seventh Sin, Disrelish:
There is nothing to disrelish within the musical spectrum of Burial Oath and their album, Beyond The Vale Of Shadowland.
This concludes the Burial Oath, Beyond The Vale Of Shadowland review
Track-listing:
- The Ritual
- A Graven Wintertide
- Coffin Nails
- Sol av svart
- Transcendent Void
- Deathymn
- Beyond the Vale of Shadowlands
- Womb of Cosmic Bane
Burial Oath Is:
- JV Green: drums
- Dominic Passalacqua: guitars
- Rob Schraeder: bass
- Mor Grish: vocals
Band/Artist Links:
