The blessing and curse that goes with our shared passion for music is that there’s often so many good bands that it’s difficult to keep up with them all. Maybe it’s just me and my listening habits and attention span deficiencies, but I find that, too often, I’ll hear about a band, make a note to check them out, and then before I get a chance to spin it, or at best, before I can properly digest what I hear, along comes something else to distract me. Michael Wuensch touched upon this overload in his excellent dissection of the current metal scene (found here), and he hit the nail on the head, so, of late, I’ve been trying to get better about dedicated listening.
Still, there’s plenty of catching up to do.
One such band that I glossed over and never gave their proper due is Kansas City’s Ares Kingdom. I first came across them around the time of their last record, 2010’s Incendiary; my attention was piqued when my good buddy Jim Brandon reviewed that album favorably on these very internet pages. But then, I’m ashamed to say – ooohshinyobject! – I forgot to, y’know, actually listen to Incendiary…
I’ve rectified that predicament now, if you’re wondering, and based on The Unburiable Dead, not delving into Incendiary back then was a definite oversight, for sure.
But then again, was it, really? I say that because, as aptly titled as Incendiary was, in listening now, The Unburiable Dead may well be the better place for me to come in. If nothing else, it’s a stronger album, for sure, which is saying something since Incendiary is no slouch.
According to a recent interview, guitarist / songwriter Chuck Keller actually had some of the song ideas for The Unburiable Dead around the time that he was writing for Incendiary, but he wanted the tracks that would make up this current record to be a part of a more focused whole.
Stylistically, the two records are similar – it’s Ares Kingdom’s signature death / thrash / black amalgam, presented once again with the loose and rough production that perfectly befits their style. Taking inspiration from World War I – a subject that Keller knows so well that he gets invited to conduct guest lectures at Kansas City’s World War I museum – the songs on The Unburiable Dead deal with the band’s usual topics of war and destruction. But in line with Keller’s desires, The Unburiable Dead feels more focused, more developed, and for lack of some greater critical appraisal, just plain ol’ better. Part of the improvement is a further embracing of Ares Kingdom’s earlier hints at catchy, more straight-ahead traditional-metal riffcraft – this is still death metal at heart, but there’s an art to creating catchy riffs, and Keller has developed it, and quite well.
From the outset of “Ubique,” it’s clear that The Unburiable Dead has an epic streak beneath its harsh exterior – those crashing chords, the driving riffs that don’t so much exhibit a melodic sense as imply it. The whole is raw and rough, but it’s informed by traditional metal, even as it’s wholly rooted in the crossroads of death and thrash. By the time vocalist / bassist Alex Blume snarls “Wave upon wave upon wave upon wave” through the chorus, “Ubique” has achieved a certain death / thrash perfection, a trifecta of unbridled energy, memorable riff and vocal hook, and fist-and-finger-in-the-air attitude.
That streak continues through Dead’s best moments: “Salient And Redoubt,” the instrumental “Writhe: Fettered To A Corpse,” and the ten-minute literal-epic closer “Stultifera Navis (Armistice And League).” Blume’s growl is intelligible, perfect considering the Wilfred Owen war-poet quality of Keller’s lyrics – Ares Kingdom trades not in standard death metal gore-and-war fare, but rather in the kind of learned writing that brings you such simple but effective summations of life on the front line as “Hell no longer of fire and flame / hell is mud.” Still, with multiple listens of The Unburiable Dead (and likely many more to come), what stands out most are these riffs – most bands can’t manage one single one as killer as the main riff to “The Unburiable Dead,” and Ares Kingdom brings many of the same ilk, throughout every track.
So, yes, I missed out on this band, but I’m catching up now, and hey, better late than never, right?
… The answer there is: Yes, literally, it’s better late than never, because I definitely didn’t want to miss out on Ares Kingdom forever, and I won’t miss out on them again. If you’ve missed out so far, then stop, and if you haven’t, then continue onward, because The Unburiable Dead is first-rate.
