Pallbearer vocalist and guitarist Brett Campbell, and bassist and vocalist Joseph D. Rowland, sat down with Greg Kennelty of Metal Injection discuss their upcoming album Mind Burns Alive due out May 17.
The conversation touched on everything from Forgotten Days and Mind Burns Alive not quite being sister albums to purposefully going for a “quieter” sound, as well as Pallbearer‘s first proper tour in a few years.
On Mind Burns Alive and Forgotten Days being “sister albums”
Brett Campbell: “At one point, we conceived of them to be [sister albums]. We were originally gonna record [Mind Burns Alive] in March 2020. We considered it like, a sun and moon type thing where Forgotten Days is very fiery and riff heavy and direct. [Mind Burns Alive] was supposed to be more of like a nighttime album, more subtle, with stretches of… I don’t wanna say peacefulness, but at least calm. I think as time went on and we kept conceptualizing, it became farther away from Forgotten Days. I don’t think they really have that much in common other than that they were conceptualized at the same time, or the the beginnings of the songs were written at the same time.
“Even early on when we were writing, we realized that even though these batches of songs were being created together, there was a distinct difference between the groups of material. So it was pretty easy to separate them into two mental compartments and treat them as two different things. The concept of them being sister albums from back in 2019 was more due to the fact that we had the material and we were just gonna put them out close to one another. But I think like ultimately they’re pretty different from one another in terms of where we were coming from compositionally.”
On separating the two albums during the writing process
Joseph D. Rowland: “It was very easy to see the separation. Once we realized that there were some pretty significant sonic differences between the kind of groups of songs we were writing, we were just like, ‘all right, we’re gonna focus on Forgotten Days first and then revisit the other songs.’ Which at the time we thought was going to be a pretty short time. We recorded Forgotten Days in November of 2019. I think our studio time [for Mind Burns Alive] was around late April 2020. The pandemic was in full effect then, so that got wiped clean.
“I think that once we realized that there was some demarcation of what belonged where, it wasn’t difficult to be like, ‘all right, these are put on the back burner, so to speak, because they’re on a different record.’ It was really easy to know what we were gonna work on when.
On Mind Burns Alive being less in-your-face than Forgotten Days
Brett Campbell: “Forgotten Days is that kind of chugging element of the band, distilled. We actively tried to cut out a lot of the more winding elements of our songs. We challenged ourselves to see if we could make an effective Pallbearer song that was like, five or six minutes, as opposed to like nine to 12 minutes which is not as easy as it might sound – those kind of progressive winding elements are a big part of the band’s sonic identity.
“On Forgotten Days, we were challenging ourselves to see if we could do it. With such a riff heavy record, it would not make a lot of sense to just go and do that same thing again, creatively. That would be kind of boring. Like, what’s the point of doing that again? We just did a extremely riffy record. So I think from the standpoint of the creative process, it’s a lot more interesting to focus on a different side of the band that we hadn’t really explored in depth [on Mind Burns Alive]. It’s always been there, but it’s not something that we really focused on as the forefront for the creative process, the conceptual process of a record.
“Even on something like ‘A Plea for Understanding’ off of Heartless, as far back as that, there’s sort of the seeds of these quieter moments where I’m not belting it out. There’s some space. The music breathes, but it had never been at the forefront in the way that it is on this new record.”
On Pallbearer‘s change in sound between Heartless and Mind Burns Alive
Joseph D. Rowland: “I think honestly, it widens the horizon for us a little bit. We’ve always had those building blocks there. Every Pallbearer record has had quieter, more introspective moments on it. We just decided to amplify, no pun intended, that element this time.
“In terms of touring with other bands who might be on the less bombastic end of the spectrum, or even more extreme, you know – there are other bands that we’ve like had some talks with about touring with that are like considerably more extreme than a band that you might expect us to tour with. I think we’re like not really ones to be content with kind of staying in the same place artistically for very long. I think that that spills over into the kind of presentation that we want to have in the live setting and in the studio.
Brett Campbell: “I think also for us, something you were saying about our last three records that’s a distinction that a lot of people make that we don’t really make internally. To us, it’s more of like a straight line. I think the seeds for all of our records are there. They were there amongst us at the very beginning and what we conceptualized the band to be. I think a lot of people think there’s like, Sorrow & Extinction and Foundations, and then some other stuff.
“Even with Foundations, we were already pushing what we could do as musicians. Butjust after doing Foundations, we had leveled up so much just as players and as composers, that we funneled it into this like extremely maximalist thing, which was Heartless. But that was always kind of what we were trying to do from the beginning. We just didn’t have the skill.
“Once we reached the level of technical competency that we had by that point, writing something that’s technical and dense in that way isn’t as interesting to us. So our music has taken a different path because that is interesting. Like, it’s challenging to incorporate the quiet elements in a way that feels emotionally tied to the core of what Pallbearer is. I think we always have an instinct for what that is amongst ourselves.
“We understand when something is Pallbearer, and that can take many different forms. I think something like Sorrow & Extinction, something like Heartless, and something like Mind Burns Alive, as different as they may seem on the surface, to us, it’s all still kind of the same thing.
On not quite being a “doom” band
Brett Campbell: “We don’t know what to call ourselves. I’m okay with being called a doom band. I’m also okay with being called something like a rock band, or just a metal band in a more broad sense, because it’s all true. Like, yeah, we are still a doom band, but we also have elements of like so many other things. So it’s really hard to just say we are one specific thing. All of these things are true, you know? We don’t know what we are. We just think of it as Pallbearer, and we know when something is Pallbearer and that can be just many different things.”
On their upcoming tour
Joseph D. Rowland: “We’re excited to get out and actually do a proper North American tour for the first time in a long time. We haven’t done like a full North American tou since before Forgotten Days came out, so that’s going to be exciting. We’ve done some shorter things. We did the run with Yob last year and the really short run with High on Fire, but there hasn’t been… we haven’t been to Canada in forever. There’s plenty of places that we haven’t been to in a good minute.
“Trying to get the engine cranked back up post-COVID just took a long time. That was like part of the impetus for me moving back to Arkansas. Commuting back and forth for rehearsals and stuff just got complicated and got way more expensive. I used to like fly back and forth constantly, and the logistics of it for a lot of different reasons got difficult and it just seemed… right place, right time kind of situation. So that was at least one of the contributing factors. Everything after COVID was just kind of messed up for a while.”
Mind Burns Alive is available for pre-order here. Pallbearer will hit the road for a massive tour featuring The Keening, Rwake, REZN, and Inter Arma starting this June. Get your tickets here.
Pallbearer, Rwake & The Keening
6/6 Memphis, TN Growlers
6/7 Murfreesboro, TN Hop Springs
6/8 Birmingham, AL Zydeco
6/9 Atlanta, GA The Masquerade
Pallbearer, REZN & The Keening
6/11 Durham, NC The Fruit
6/12 Asheville, NC Euology at Burial Beer Co.
6/14 Baltimore, MD Metro Gallery
6/15 Lancaster, PA Tellus360
6/16 Philadelphia, PA Underground Arts
6/18 Hamden, CT Space Ballroom
6/20 Brooklyn, NY Music Hall of Williamsburg
6/21 Boston, MA The Sinclair
6/22 Montreal, QC Theatre Fairmount
6/23 Toronto, ON Velvet Underground
6/25 Milwaukee, WI Vivarium
6/26 Chicago, IL Thalia Hall
6/27 St. Paul, MN Turf Club
6/28 Lawrence, KS The Bottleneck
6/29 Little Rock, AR The Hall (+ Rwake)
Pallbearer, Inter Arma & The Keening
7/11 St. Louis, MO Off Broadway
7/13 Denver, CO Gothic Theatre
7/15 Calgary, AB Dickens
7/16 Edmonton, AB The Starlite Room
7/18 Vancouver, BC Rickshaw Theatre
7/19 Seattle, WA Substation
7/23 Sacramento, CA The Starlet Room
7/24 San Francisco, CA Great American Music Hall
7/26 Santa Cruz, CA The Catalyst
7/27 San Diego, CA Brick By Brick
7/28 Los Angeles, CA Teragram Ballroom
7/29 Phoenix, AZ Crescent Ballroom
7/30 Albuquerque, NM Sister Bar
8/1 Dallas, TX Trees
8/2 Austin, TX Parish
8/3 Houston, TX White Oak Music Hall