Sanctuary in sadness: Little Rock metal band Pallbearer plays Santa Cruz debut

A 2019 study in Emotion, the journal published by the American Psychological Association, reported that depressed people expressed feeling better after listening to sad music. This all-too-human phenomenon is called the “sadness paradox.” 

However, was a whole study really necessary to determine if the sadness paradox is real or not? After all, who doesn’t have that one song, artist, band or album they always return to after a breakup? Or when a loved one dies? Or if they just can’t seem to get themselves out of bed that day or foreseeable future? 

It’s definitely a concept not lost on Little Rock, Arkansas, funeral doom metal act Pallbearer, who make their Santa Cruz debut at The Catalyst on Friday. 

“With metal bands you expect them to start with the heaviest, most intense song,” Pallbearer’s lead singer, guitarist and lyricist Brett Campbell told Lookout last week. “But we wanted to establish a different type of atmosphere. We wanted to establish an emotional heaviness.”

Campbell is talking about the band’s latest, “Mind Burns Alive,” its fifth studio album released this past May. Particularly he’s talking about “Where the Light Fades,” the opening track that is unlike anything Pallbearer has done before. It’s a 6-minute and 39-second ballad with haunting melodies packed with emotions and themes of sadness, guilt and sinking deep into the waters of isolation. 

What makes “Where the Light Fades” stand out is its lack of almost everything that makes a heavy metal song. Instead, it’s stripped and minimalist, encapsulating and using a still quietness to convey its pain, anguish and loneliness. For the first 6 minutes it’s devoid of all distortion, something unheard of in the genre. Instead the track focuses on a cleaner sound to match the clean singing for which Campbell is known. Even stranger is that while the song’s themes are very heavy, the music is light and airy (until the last 45 seconds when distortion kicks in full blast). 

And Pallbearer is undeniably doom metal and – more specifically – funeral doom. 

Begun sometime in the early 1990s, funeral doom takes the sludgy, slowed-down tempo of doom metal and blends it with melodic funeral dirges. The result is an otherworldly, dreamlike atmosphere that takes the listener into a sonic journey through what psychoanalysis godfather Carl Jung called the “shadow self.” The music might be dark, but there’s beauty in the absence of light which fans – and critics – can attest to. 

Campbell and bassist Joseph D. Rowland formed Pallbearer in 2008 after the end of their experimental act, SPORTS. Within a year, they were joined by second guitarist Devin Holt and added drummer Mark Lierly after their 2012 debut album, “Sorrow and Extinction.” 

Pallbearer has become one of the more acclaimed and respected doom metal bands of the past two decades, especially among their peers. Doom bands like Yob, Elder and Baroness have all toured with Pallbearer many times over the years. Yet, acts from heavy metal’s multiple subgenres have also shared the stage with Pallbearer, like death metal godfathers Obituary, Norway’s blackened progressive Enslaved and Richmond, Virginia’s, uncategorical Inter Arma – the last of which are currently on tour with their friends and will join them at the upcoming Catalyst show. 

While each of Pallbearer’s five albums are different from one another, this album stands out.

“It was kind of a challenge to the listener or audience,” Campbell says. “Because this album has more minimalist sections than we’ve had before – and more lighter parts – why not establish the modality right out of the gate?” 

Then there’s the album track “Endless Place,” an almost prog-rock song complete with an instrument that’s only metal by what it’s made of: the saxophone. 

“We were in our neighborhood bar when we came up with the idea,” recalls Campbell. “The album was almost completed and someone – I think it was maybe [drummer] Mark [Lierly] – came up with it. It was totally spontaneous, but we all thought it was a good idea.” 

When the band released its third full-length, “Heartless,” in 2017, New York Times Magazine cultural critic David Rees called them “one of the most resonant emotional campaigns in American rock music.” That same year, online culture and travel media website Thrillist named Pallbearer the Best Band from Arkansas in its Best Bands From Every State ranking. Three years later, during the height of the COVID lockdowns, the band released its fourth album, “Forgotten Days,” which independent online music magazine Consequence of Sound called “perhaps the best doom metal album of 2020.” 

Despite being together for 16 years, Pallbearer’s members are still humble about the accolades they’ve received. 

“We’re just four idiots in a band doing as well as we can,” Campbell laughs. “We’ve always had a high concept of musical goals with the hope that we can continue to do better each time.” 

The band originally wrote many of the songs on “Mind Burns Alive” in conjunction with “Forgotten Days” and were going to release it without announcement or fanfare. However, after a slew of what Campbell calls “seemingly endless obstacles,” the band was finally able to sit down and record the new songs. 

“We were finally able to get it done almost one year to the day from the first time we attempted a studio recording,” he says, but admits sometimes waiting isn’t always bad. “I think the songs then were not as flushed out as they ended up being, so it ended up being a good thing.” 

All of the songs were written by Campbell and Rowland, the Paul McCartney to Campbell’s John Lennon. Just like McCartney and Lennon, Rowland and Campbell write the songs separately before bringing them to the group. When writing the songs that would become “Forgotten Days” and “Mind Burns Alive,” they realized they were touching on the same feelings and themes, leading to the separate album releases. 

The new album takes its title from the second track of the same name and touches on themes of feeling overwhelmed. The chorus – “My mind is ignited/I can feel it burning down/Watch and wonder as the embers glow/If my flame can be put out” – touches on the feelings of hopelessness people who struggle with depression often go through. It’s an emotional journey Campbell knows all too well. 

“All of the material reflects on personal experiences in our lives, though not necessarily about me,” he says. “I’m just a regular guy so it’s always amazing to hear people say that our songs literally saved their lives. It sets a high standard and I don’t take it lightly.” 

After the current North American tour wraps up in August, the band plans on taking a break until the end of October, when they hit Europe for a month. After that, Campbell says they have no plans but that he hopes to release more music more frequently. Rowland recently moved back to Little Rock from Brooklyn, New York, marking the first time all members of Pallbearer lived in the same city in nine years. What’s more, Campbell said, they not only live in the same city again, but they’re all within a 3-mile radius of one another. 

Meaning the future of new music from the heavy quartet looks bright, despite the darkness they explore. 

“Over the COVID years we took the time to research what we needed to do to get to a place we’d been trying to reach,” Campbell says. “We’re finally at a place we want to be sonically and melodically.” 

Pallbearer plays The Catalyst Atrium in a 16-and-up show on Friday, July 26, at 8 p.m. Tickets $25 in advance, $30 at the door.

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