Band: Buried In Black
Title: Black Death
Label: AFM Records
Distribution: Rock Inc. / Bertus
Release date: June 10th 2011
Review: CD

Hamburg-based formation Buried In Black was formed about three years ago by ex-members of e.g. Nayled, Lobotomy, Dark Age and Mad Doggin. Their debut demo (Arms Of Armageddon, recorded at the end of 2009) turned out to be the start of a success-story; it got even (s)elected as ‘demo of the month’ in an issue of Germany’s Metal Hammer. This successful demo opened the gates for the band to play live with huge names like All That Remains, Maroon and Disbelief, amongst others.
At the end of last year, the band signed to AFM, and the quintet (Torsten Eggert-b, Ron Brunke-v, Sören Teckenburg-d, Ben Liepelt-g, and Etienne Belmar-g) finally started recording the material they wrote for the debut full length, Black Death, with a final result that lasts for forty two minutes.
Black Death collects ten heavy songs, somewhat retro, yet at the same time decently modern sounding. It’s the kind of Death Metal that takes no prisoners, that makes no compromises, without getting rid of any well-constructed form of melody. It isn’t of the over-produced, plastic kind, this performance, yet grooving, rocking, trashing, pushing.
A few remarks however. The tracks might sound alike from time to time. I do miss the obliged variation (when it comes to this no-nonsense approach, some diversity between the songs, or within a song, is required), even though a few times (just a very few times) are rather revealing. I do miss an own face as well. It’s not that Buried In Black are scene’s copycats; a self-created identity would be a surplus for sure.
Black Death certainly is not a bad Death Metal album, yet for sure it is nothing more than that either.

67/100

Ivan Tibos.