Burial Tree is the experimental project of American, Bay Area-based guitarist, keyboard player, and vocalist Monte Cimino. Burial Tree released two albums – Outer Dark and Rituals (Self-Released, 2010-2012), and Cimino continued to record under the Burial Tree moniker. During the COVID-19 Cimino continued to record music that did not fit any of his current projects at the time, and he decided to revive Burial Tree with a rotating lineup of musicians.

The Power of Myth is the first album of the new incarnation of Burial Tree. The three extended, distinct pieces navigate between post-rock, experimental ambient music, and metal. Cimino recruited for this project the prolific bassist-producer Bill Laswell (who mixed the album and added additional recordings in his Orange Music studio in West Orange, New Jersey), his close associate, sax player Peter Apfelbaum, ex-Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo, and Bay Area drummer Adam McClure.

The first piece, «Sigils», with Laswell and McClure, alternates between post-rock ambience to stubborn, metal grind, driven by McClure’s manic drumming, and with Laswell’s familiar dub bass overtones and bass treatments. «Veve», with Lombardo (adding electronics) and Apfelbaum (adding megaphone), with a title that references voodoo symbols, offers a cinematic, mean and fiery metal attack, with Lombardo’s massive, earth-shaking drumming, spiced with psychedelic, noisy overtones. The last, title piece, with Laswell, dives slowly into a mysterious, psychedelic ambiance, where Cimino and Laswell’s array of effects and treatments enrich its spacious sonic palette.

Eyal Hareuveni

Monte Cimino (guitar, effects), Bill Laswell (bass, treatments, effects), Adam McClure (drums), Peter Apfelbaum (saxophone, megaphone), Dave Lombardo (drums, electronics)