BURIED INSIDE – Chronoclast

Buried Inside challenges their listeners not only with their music but with their lyrics as well. With their latest offering, Chronoclast, the band have put on their intellectual hats and have come up with an album full of songs about time. Time is a concept we all come to grips with daily, but how many of us have really seriously stopped to think about the real concept of time and what and how it’s used and how it effects and controls us? Buried Inside has really looked into this and on Chronoclast offers the listeners eight different views on time.

Actually, time seems to be a hot topic at the moment. Just turn on any commercial radio and you won’t need to wait long before hearing Gwen Stefani asking you “What you’re waiting for?”.

Chronoclast could almost be viewed as one song lasting the entire album, but divided into different sections. The whole album seems to be a continuous flow of hardcore sounds tied together with melodic parts. Each new section starts with lighter and slower melodic parts, which brings the feeling of anticipation, and also gives a feeling of time pressing onward.

These melodic passages make way for more aggressive sounds and the singer’s angry growling. Nicholas’ vocals are mainly aggressive, and traces of frustrated and desperate tones along with accusatory and angry tones can be found mixed within the growling. Mostly, though, there is little variety within the vocal delivery, which is in direct contrast with the diversity of the music itself. The shouting is so brutal that it takes a while to realize that the main vocals are often supported with background shouting. The brutal vocals carry with them a feel of doom. The melodic parts in the songs lighten the mood temporally, but the overall feeling of this album still remains dark. The monotony of the vocals wear the album down a bit, making the duet at the end of “Time Is A Commodity” a welcome vocal change.

Although Chronoclast has a theme running through it, the band themselves prefer not to call it a concept album. This concept of time study is a bit like starting on conspiracy theories. Looking more closely can reveal surprising things that the viewer never new existed, and may even unknowingly be taking part in.

With Chronoclast, Buried Inside’s third album, these Canadian hopefuls bring on an attack against time and challenge our conception of it. The chaos caused by the occasional melancholic interludes, along with the dark and brutal atmosphere topped with raw and tortured screams, turns to an interesting and varied soundscape, which can be marveled at even if the topic of the songs does not appeal to you. It will be interesting to see, however, how the band brings the lighter parts of this album (with the strings and all) to their live shows.