The Burial - In The Taking Of Flesh

I'm a huge fan of the Burial. I loved the band's debut, The Winepress, and I was even more enamored with their tech metal follow-up, Lights and Perfections. The progression and maturity between the two records was wonderful and even if the Burial released Lights and Perfections part two, the album would be brilliant.

In The Taking Of Flesh is another musical progression, further into tech metal goodness. Full of riffs, solos, complex time signatures and time changes, In The Taking Of Flesh should make any metal fan happy. But my favorite thing about In The Taking Of Flesh is the rawness.

As much as I love Lights and Perfection, there's something about the raw sound of In The Taking Of Flesh that I love so much more. In fact, it's so raw that when The Burial released he lyric video for Wretched Restless Forms, I wasn't sure I was going to like In The Taking Of Flesh. It's a solid metal song but there are more hardcore elements in the opening riff and the song, on it's own, seemed lacking and a little uninteresting when compared to Lights and Perfection. Lucky, in context, the song works a lot better.

As soon as I hit play and En-Hakkore started, my fears about In The Taking of Flesh vanished. A nice haunting strings and keys intro before the Burial bursts into epic riff upon epic riff. The song is so enjoyable that I don't even notice when Itching Ears starts. There are some of those hardcore elements that make their appearance early in the song but Itching Ears is a full on metal assault. Both the title tracks (named Theanthropos and Diakonos) are absolutely fantastic tracks. The songs feel both more and less technical than Lights and Perfections. There's more riffs and less guitar wankery.

As different as In The Taking of Flesh is at times, there's nothing about this record that will disappoint fans of The Burial. The band is one of Facedown's best and brightest. This is another step in a positive direction. It's pure metal, through and through.