Buried Realm – The Dormant Darkness Review

If you even just casually perused the somewhat distant corners of conversations about modern melodic death metal, you’d inevitably hear about Buried Realm – an impressive, riff-oriented one-person project out of Colorado. That one person being Josh Dummer.

To Dummer’s credit, the band has always felt less like a novelty and much more like an incredibly talented person who regroups every few years to pull other incredibly talented people together as a collective. He’s been doing this for eight years now and it shows. That he’s been putting this together in that aforementioned somewhat distant corner makes Buried Realm all the more special.

The Dormant Darkness – the band’s fourth album – finds Dummer joined by drummer Heikki Saari (Finntroll, Crownshift), with guest vocals from Björn “Speed” Strid (Soilwork, The Night Flight Orchestra) and Christian Älvestam (Miseration, ex-Scar Symmetry, ex-Solution .45) and guest appearances from guitarists Christopher Amott (Black Earth, ex-Arch Enemy), Gus G. (Firewind, ex-Ozzy Osbourne), Per Nilsson (Scar Symmetry, Nocturnal Rites, Kaipa), and Daniel Freyberg (Crownshift, ex-Children of Bodom). Franscesco Ferrini (Fleshgod Apocalypse) even does the orchestration and additional synth. It is, as expected, a very massive, full sounding album.

If you weren’t at all familiar with the band, and you read through all those appearances, what might surprise you most about The Dormant Darkness is just how put together, how cohesive it all sounds. To his credit, Dummer has developed a clear aesthetic; a slightly bouncy speediness propelled by sinewy riffs that often build to an always climactic and sometimes clean chorus. I can’t emphasize the speedy part of the equation enough, though – this is a speedy album, right from the gate, from the first few seconds of opener “Bloodline Artifice” to closer and title track “The Dormant Darkness.”

Leads continue to be a selling point, but like the self-titled before it, this fourth Buried Realm album is, more than anything, song based. And I’ll always be partial to the songs with Strid (that’s “Human Code” and “Where the Armless Phantoms Glide, Pt. II” here). But there isn’t a weak track among the eight, the guest features are seamlessly incorporated, and without sacrificing anything the production itself brings all layers to the forefront. The end result is every bit as impressive as it’s always been.

The target demographic for any Buried Realm release is, though perhaps not narrow, certainly defined. It’s fair to say that, not unlike many who were in high school at the near peak of more accessible Swedish melodic death metal, I was enamored with In Flames, Arch Enemy and Soilwork. And, perhaps not like that same group now, the interest endured. If that’s true of you, you will, undoubtedly, find at least something to interest you here. Another stellar release from Josh Dummer and friends.