Tools In My Digital Workshop - Handymen and carpenters have their workbench. Designers and architects have their studios. This is where most of my fragmented musical ideas start to be molded and shaped into a finished song.
Joe (Joseph D.) Rowland
Bassist, co-leader and co-writer in the prog-metal band Pallbearer -- pretty good on keys, too.
Because I enjoy overextending my metaphors, I tried comparing Pallbearer's debut full-length, this year's Sorrow and Extinction (Profound Lore), to "crossing the taiga on horseback: lonely and exalting, incomprehensibly vast and devastatingly beautiful, driven by the stubborn rhythms of the body rather than by the hope of a destination." I wouldn't mind if these guys started a trend in doom metal: the riffs are satisfyingly thick, hooky, and sophisticated, with layers of melody and countermelody moving past one another in stately dances, and the clean, mournful vocals stick quivering in your brain like icy spears. -- Philip Montoro, www.chicagoreader.com