The band, which was founded in the late nineties by New-York artist Michael Laird to give free vent to his eclectic taste in music, which ranges from neo-medieval to prog-rock and from Arabic folk to heavy metal and synth-pop, has been known to require a broad mind to fully digest and this seventh full-length is no different. Accompanied by female acolytes Natalia Lincoln (vocals, keyboards) and Ericah Hagle (vocals), Michael has once again given his music the pot-pourri treatment, which goes a long way toward explaining the hit-and-miss nature of ‘Burials Foretold’.

It all starts promisingly enough with a gentle guitar-based intro that oozes mystery to quite agreeable effect and you find yourself thinking that since you’ve grown tired of the original by now, you wouldn’t mind listening to some Sol Invictus sound-a-likes for a change. Come the second number, though, and the band have decided to go all neo-medieval over us, think mid-nineties Corvus Corax. And before you’ve had a chance to recover, it’s back to the six-string and mainman Michael Laird’s gentle vox. And so the album unfolds like some sort of drunken butterfly that never quite knows which flower to land upon.

The songs are short and to the point, the instrumentation lush and impeccable-sounding. It is the compositional department, really, that leaves somewhat to be desired, with the compositions never veering too far away from tried-and-tested patterns and some of the lyrics clearly written under considerable stress or with family members held hostage. The fact that some of them are sung by a female voice that sends the tree-hug-o-meter sky-rocket more than should be deemed legal this side of a theme-park does not help either. Don’t get me wrong, I think unearthing lost poetical gems (Ambrose Pierce, Robert Frost) is all to Michael’s credit, it’s just that somehow the music never seems to do the verses full justice.

As those of you who follow them will know, the band has never shied away from the cover exercise and this time around, it’s hard-rock legends Van Halen (‘Running with the Devil’) and Norwegian synth-pop stalwarts Apoptygma Berzerk (‘Kathy’s Song’) who are given the honours, which I suppose is another buying incentive if you happen to be fan of either of those bands.

Bearing in mind what I wrote in the first paragraph, I decided to give the album a listen in various life situations (hard at work, brushing my teeth before going to sleep, not-so-hard at work, repairing a leaking toilet or doing some paint work, to name but a few) but ended up not rating it any better than after the first couple of listens. Whether it says more about my intrinsic affinity with the kind of music Unto Ashes perform or my inability to give things a chance when I’m clearly not in the mood, I’ll let you be the judge.