It's always fascinating when underground metal goes so deep into its zone that it essentially stops sounding like metal. Planning For Burial, the one-man project from Wilkes-Barre musician Thom Wasluck, pretty much exists in that zone. His new song "You Think" is a perfect example. There are things on "You Think" that mark it as experimental black metal -- the overwhelming wall of buzz-drone guitars, the sometimes-tortured vocals. But "You Think" has saxophones and big, sad melodies working for it. It's got Wasluck wailing that he's not as disciplined as his father was, which is not exactly the same thing as promising the coming reign of Odin. Ultimately, "You Think" is just a really cool, emotive, atmospheric rock song, and metal isn't that important to the tone that Wasluck conjures.
"You Think" is the second single from the upcoming Planning For Burial LP It's Closeness, It's Easy; we already posted the equally cinematic "A Flowing Field Of Green." Director Alana Wood's "You Think" video is an explicit homage to the Replacements' "Bastards Of Young" clip, the famous one that's just a static image of a speaker. This time it's a very slow digital zoom-in, and it stars a cat who doesn't seem to care one big about the sound that may be coming out of that speaker. Here's what Thom Wasluck has to say about the song and video:
"You Think" is the oldest song on the record, as it has already been a live staple for a number of years and the only one to survive the first attempt at making the album. The lyrics evolved a few times over the years, but the core of it is about making sense of everything after coming out of the blur of a years long self-destruction party. My problems were of my own doing, and now I have to work to keep from falling back into the same pitfalls.
Musically, I wanted to push the idea of what I thought Planning For Burial could be. I wanted to have songs with more movement, upping the tempo and utilizing my voice a bit more than usual while also trying to retain the smeared textured of guitars and synths.
The 'Mats were adverse to the idea of self-promotion in the video age; they just wanted to be a band. There’s parallels to that in todays music business where it’s often not good enough to be an artist; you now have to play the roll of content creator/influencer to appease the great algorithm just to get your music in front of people. It often feels anti-art.
I worked with Alana Wool to come up with a concept that pulls from the 'Mats, complete middle-finger attitude that was also a piece of art that to me really encompasses the feeling of angsty boredom with my own memory of late nights drinking alone, shuffling around the house watching the hours/days/weeks/etc peel away.
Check it out below.
It’s Closeness, It’s Easy is out 5/30 on the Flenser.
