BURIAL is an Italian death doom band that formed in 2012. After two demos, an EP and a compilation, the band has unleashed their full length debut album. "Inner Gateways To The Slumbering Equilibrium At The Center of Cosmos," is a trip down cosmic horror lane.  It is as dark and cavernous as expected but just as brutal. If doom metal is the equivalent of falling down a pit with impending death at the bottom, then this album is falling down a pit but it is lined with razor sharp edges and there isn't a bottom. "Inner Gateways..." is a trap of never ending darkness and it is pain filled all the way down.

The doom elements are ever present but BURIAL don't shy away from taking a death metal approach when needed.  It is without a doubt music that is uneasy, hard to approach, and underground as hell.  In essence, it is stunningly played but all about emotion in its own way. That is what makes the album so great: when needed. Despite the long songs, this isn't an album where more is more, just notes stuffed to the brim for the sake of it. No, what is presented is there for a reason. Music like this demands long songs and everything that goes into them. These five comic trips don't feel as long as they are, which is always what you want in doom.  They also sound different from each other while still obviously being part of the same whole.

"The Curse Of The Unbornlike God," begins with a heavy handed riff being backed by a dismal melody. It it ugly, nasty and more than a little terrifying. Could you imagine looking up in the sky and seeing some terror hovering? That finality that you would no doubt feel is exactly what this song sounds like. This feeling builds up into a death metal rage, with the bass ripping up the sky for speeding drums and classic style death metal riffs to come bursting forth from. From 5:08 to the song's end is the audio equivalent of suffocating: futile darkness overtaking your mind, body and soul.

"Halls Of The Formless Unraveler," takes the opposite approach and begins with a barrage of drums leading the charge. The bass/guitar combination here shook my headphones because it is a mini earthquake of riffs. The song slows to a crawl with some ambient tones bringing up the passages in between the death metal. The lead guitar at the 5:28 mark messes with the head, a twilight zone movement but the double bass is also grinding that head into dust.  This album just loves to pummel as much as it buries the listener.

Is "Absent Visions Conceive Unspeakable Beings" the soundtrack to a nightmare? Or is the nightmare itself. This song is rife with unseen dangers and the results of when they are finally revealed. The bass and clean guitar are a powerful mix of uneasy cosmic emotion as the song lurches ever forward. Ambient noises throw in legitimate fear into the music. At the 3:19 mark, the hidden danger in the form of a musical miasma creeps out, infected and changing what it touches.

"Dark Womb Of Outern Creation" is divided up nicely into moods and the styles used to present them. The beginning is slow paced, letting the feeling of trepidation hang in the air. Afterwards, and up to the 4:35 mark, the onset of devastation hits hard, resulting in an uneasy acceptance of a dark fate permeates the senses. The title track is last, a nearly fourteen minute long song that encompasses much.  Much of the song is instrumental, the band letting the instruments speaking for themselves. With that being said, the vocals on this track stand out as an instrument of their own. The song fades out at the 5:42 mark into a dead land of sparse resources and even less light. Very few releases this year have utilized  bass like BURIAL have on this song. It is its own sort of beast and when it mixes with the guitars it is like two different planes of reality have split you in two.

BURIAL's "Inner Gateways To The Slumbering Equilibrium At The Center of Cosmos," may not be for everyone but it should at least be experienced once. If you handle the darkness, this is well worth facing.