Album Review: Bury Your Dead - 'Bury Your Dead'

Bury Your Dead have never been a groundbreaking band… and that’s cool. The guys who play in BYD started doing so because it was fun and they wanted to do something less technical than their existing outfits… although why anyone would want to abandon Blood Has Been Shed is beyond me. With such a straight forward mission statement, it was hard not to like BYD. Their live shows looked like a good time and the contents of their first couple of records were injected with a healthy dose of humour and a lot of easy to digest riffing.

2006 saw the release of Beauty And The Breakdown, which was something of a disappointment in the eyes of their long term fans. But if you thought the band was losing it then, wait until you hear their latest effort! That’s right ladies and gentleman, introducing you to the most disappointing record of 2008… the self titled Bury Your Dead album.

There are some positives though. The production sounds huge in a “completely triggered and almost mechanical” way and Bury Your Dead still know how to pack a punch… rest assured the band’s trademark collection of breakdowns is still capable of knocking you on your arse. Then what’s wrong with the record I hear you say? Let’s go from the top…

I don’t imagine that we’ll ever see Bury Your Dead touring Australia because that costs money, something BYD are going to be a little short of when Fear Factory are done suing the five piece for copyright infringement. Seriously, everything from the guitar tones to the vocal patterns sounds like a carbon copy of Digimortal era FF. Come on guys, if you’re going to rip off a band at least steal your ideas from their best records. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for progression, but there is nothing progressive about plagiarism.  

Clean vocals and Bury Your Dead. How many people thought they’d ever see that collection of words in the same sentence? Not I! Myke Terry’s impression of Burton C Bell is actually quite good… that is until he has a crack at singing a fucking chorus. Imagine if the vocalist from Korn had gone bankrupt and was desperately begging for money on the street. That’s what the “clean” vocals sound like!

Now some of you are probably sitting there thinking “wow, this Cam guy is an arsehole” (there’s probably some truth to that) but I challenge you to find me someone who’s listened to this entire record and actually enjoyed it. As far as stand out tracks go I did enjoy most of “Hands To Hide The Shame” and the riffs in “Fever Dream” are fucking catchy, but why oh why do the horrible vocals have to come along and ruin everything!? I guess “Womb Disease” should probably get a mention because the drum and bass intro sounds like Anthrax but apart from that I really struggled to find anything else I liked about the record.