Re-Buried – Repulsive Nature

With artwork as beautiful as it is gruesome, attention is drawn to this latest work from Seattle, USA-based Death Metal quintet Re-Buried. After a demo and a split with Deconsecration (which saw the light of day on 12″ vinyl, cassette tape and CD), they seemingly felt it was time for a debut full-length album. That debut eventually materialized with ‘Repulsive Nature’ and was released earlier this year via Translation Loss Records on the exact same three physical formats.

The music presented on this first Re-Buried record fits nicely in the development the band has shown over the course of their (relatively short) career. While by no means an album that tries to move the Death Metal genre to new heights or territories, Re-Buried’s brand of Death Metal can just basically be labelled as solid Death Metal that combines both the foundations of Old School Death Metal with a more modern approach. It has that same old Incantation like basis, low and chugging riffs, bellowing grunts and tempos that are mostly be found in the low to mid-tempo regions. But it has a bit more of a modern day Death Metal sound, not really in the so-called ‘Cavernous’ Death Metal kind of way, but close nonetheless. The way the band uses their harmonies reminds a lot of Cannibal Corpse in their late 90’s and early 00’s, but Re-Buried is clearly of an inferior level and obviously has a completely different musical aim. Yet, maybe just because of that Cannibal Corpse thing I can’t shake off the feeling that ‘Repulsive Nature’ lacks a touch of dynamism.

Although ‘Repulsive Nature’ is merely clocking in over half an hour, it still feels a bit stale, maybe even bland. There is just not a whole lot going on in the individual songs, which is not a problem when the tracks are presented in smaller portions (like on an EP or so), but even for this relatively short playing time, the sum of songs that differ little from each other makes the album a bit on the boring side. Which is certainly a shame, because the music in itself possesses enough clues and starting points to form a more exciting album than ‘Repulsive Nature’ currently is.