Review: Burial Etiquette - S/t E.p.

April 20, 2019

https://burialetiquette.bandcamp.com/releases

I'm honest unfamiliar with the screamo acts coming out of Canada these days, but they never seem to disappoint when I come across them.

Thunder Bay, Ontario's Burial Etiquette comes at us with 5 tracks of classic, late 90's early 2000's screamo. Lucky for them, I've been a screamo scholar for over a decade, so right away I knew what they were going for after listening the E.p.

They have quite a few different styles of screamo all mixed into this release.

Let me explain, every screamo band from the late 90's/early 2000's had something unique to offer. It was almost like those band's sound became a sub-genre of it's own underneath the screamo umbrella. For example, Saetia had a clean/jazzy sound, then would bust into distortion. Jeromes Dream was heavy and abrasive. City of Caterpillar's music was filled with post-rock influence.

This release captures Saetia's sound. I appreciate that because there aren't very many bands trying to tackle it! More Saetia please. Anyways, the band throws down those clean/jazzy hooks that jerk your emotions around, then straight into a wall of distortion. I absolutely love it. They also mix in a post-rock influenced vibe throughout this E.p., ala City of Caterpillar. I'm not a post-rock fan because my attention span is too short and the typical post-rock song is too drawn out for my taste, BUT Burial Etiquette does it in a way that works.

Overall I think this is a good starting point for their first release. The band could literally go in any direction since there are so many styles of the genre mixed in. That being said, I did get a derailed listening to the E.p. a couple of times because of that. I was wondering if I was going to get Saetia or a post-rock influenced track. That's not a bad thing, it's just how my ears work. Me personally, I'd love to see the band stick with the Saetia sound.

Pick up Burial Etiquette's S/t E.p. from Emocat Records in Canada or Dasein Records in Europe. For USA heads, I'm sure there's a distro carrying these.