After The Burial: Wolves Within

Math-metal Minnesotans play to their own strengths

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Of all the bands coming through that are doing the math-jazz-djent-polyrhythmic Messhuggah-worship right now, After The Burial seem to be the ones who those in the know are the most excited about.

And Wolves Within is exciting, primarily because ATB have enough nous to know that you can’t go toe-to-toe with the Swedish maestros and expect to come out looking anything other than second best.

So they’ve decided that, rather than just chug away in clever time patterns, it’s a good idea to stick in some double-pace blasting, like on Virga, and some killer guitar leads, as they do on Disconnect, to break it up a touch. Mind you when they do enter into a riff-off, there wouldn’t be many bands around who could touch the steel-fisted punch to the face that is the centrepiece of Neo Soul or the aural hundred hand slap that drives Parise.

After The Burial are certainly a clever bunch and there are far worse things that you could do than pick this album up straight away.

Stephen Hill
Stephen Hill

Since blagging his way onto the Hammer team a decade ago, Stephen has written countless features and reviews for the magazine, usually specialising in punk, hardcore and 90s metal, and still holds out the faint hope of one day getting his beloved U2 into the pages of the mag. He also regularly spouts his opinions on the Metal Hammer Podcast.