Aug. 14, 2020, Little Rock, Ark. – Pallbearer, who are set to release their fourth album, Forgotten Days on Oct. 23 via Nuclear Blast, have released a second track from the nine-song album: “Rite of Passage” (https://youtu.be/WH9GggAVjpg).
“’Rite of Passage’ is both a reflection and a confessional,” explains bass player/songwriter Joseph Rowland. “The toll that loss has taken on my life often finds ways to remind me that I may never feel whole, and the song’s purpose is to express and embody that emptiness. It felt totally appropriate to wrap it in reimagined trappings of our earliest doom-leaning material.”
The band previously released a song and accompanying video for the album’s title track (https://youtu.be/OuH3pX8tqCg) as well as a black and white “Cinema Edition” (https://youtu.be/FV1oaYgktvo). The song was met with widespread praise. Stereogum dubbed it both “hammering” and “comforting,” Consequence of Sound said the six-and-a-half-minute track is “undoubtedly the band’s heaviest material since their now-legendary 2010 Demo,” and Revolver described the album preview as “sweeping and melancholic, it carves out a shadow-cast yet verdant valley between the majesty of vintage Black Sabbath and the morbid romanticism of Type O Negative.”
Discussing the themes behind the album, singer/guitar player Brett Campbell, said: “Memory is big aspect of the new record. Memory is a big aspect of the new record. The passage of time. How things change as perspective changes. Was the past truly the way that you remember it at all? “
The Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Earth, Johan Johannson) produced album was recorded at Sonic Ranch Studios in West Texas. Michael Lierly, drummer Mark Lierly’s brother, once again created the album’s artwork, crafting images that were roughly hewn yet heartbreaking in their expressive heft. The striking cover is the ideal foil to Pallbearer’s thick musical and lyrical melancholia.
Forgotten Days (https://www.pallbearerdoom.com/forgotten-days) is available in a number of limited edition vinyl variants with physical bundles available via both the Nuclear Blast and Pallbearer webstores, as well as digitally and on CD/cassette. The title track “Forgotten Days” is offered as an immediate download with digital pre-orders on iTunes, Amazon Music and Bandcamp. Listeners can pre-save the album and listen to the title track on all DSPs: https://nblast.de/PallbearerFD.
