Buried Beneath - the demos

Buried Beneath 1992 L to R: Jason, Tim, Mikael, Shane, Steve

So while I was playing in Astaroth, I had heard that a new band was forming in Rochester. This new band became Buried Beneath. The band began after Shane (drums) and Jason (vocals) left Divination (the band split up) and they hooked up with Tim (bass) and Steve (guitar). They wanted a 2nd guitarist and the material they were doing was much better than what was going on with Astaroth. Astaroth's drummer was simply terrible. When we played our first live show he was fucking up songs left and right. Shane was a better drummer, and Steve was a very tight guitarist who had some technical ability. When I joined with them they had written 2 songs and were going by the name Seance, but I informed the guys there was already a Swedish band with that name. I ended up coming up with the band name and drawing the logo and designing the septigram at the center of the logo. The first demo was released in the summer of 1992 and was entitled "Creed Of The Unholy Spirit". Looking back now, it is average death metal. The only song I wrote was "Within The Crematory" which was inspired by my community service I did at Mt Hope Cemetery and putting bodies into the crematory and then raking the bone chips and ash out of the chamber afterwards. I know the other guys were really into Cannibal Corpse, Broken Hope, Obituary and such. Me and Shane were the ones into the 80's stuff too, although Shane was always more about image and appearing evil than he was about actually becoming a better and tighter drummer. Shortly after this debut demo was released, Steve ended up quitting our band to join Lethargy. From that time on we never had a stable 2nd guitarist. On the rest of our demos I do all the guitars. We had rhythm guitarists come and go and play live shows with us (Randy Muck, Jim and lastly Greg Herman) but no one else ever recorded guitars with us besides myself.

"Creed Of The Unholy Spirit" 1992 demo#1

1.	Evocation (intro)
2.	Creed of the Unholy Spirit
3.	Skull Duggery
4.	Within the Crematory
5.	Desecrated Trinity
6.	Christ's Empty Tomb
7.	Prophecy of Despair (outro)

DOWNLOAD HERE

So by 1993 we were a 4 piece and my song writing had become dominant by this point, although I was still working with some band members who weren't into exploring black metal and no one wanted any keyboard experimentation (I was really into The Gathering's debut CD at this point and I wanted to utilize keyboards for atmosphere). Our lyrics were much more anti-christian and we had some guy draw up the cool cover drawing showing Jesus torn from Mary's womb...hehe. Again I designed the whole demo layout, spent many hours at Kinko's copy store and made flyers. I was the sole promoter for Buried Beneath. I spread our demos through tapetrading and sent them everywhere. I don't think anyone else in the band even cared. They helped putting up flyers locally but I handled all mail correspondence. It was this demo that got us much more attention and acclaim. I do all the guitars on the demo since Steve was gone by this time and we had no 2nd guitarist yet.I also love the band pic in the demo cover - it was taken on a freezing cold day here in Rochester. Behind us is Lake Ontario. The pic was taken on a rocky beach a few miles from where I lived.

 

Buried Beneath 1993 L to R: Jason, Mikael, Tim, Shane

Flyers I made and spread thru the mail to sell the 1993 demo

"Vivisect The Virgin Mary" 1993 demo#2

1.	Reveal the Legacy (intro)
2.	A Fate Worse Than Death
3.	Lord of Lies
4.	Vivisect the Virgin Mary
5.	Remember Salem
6.	Make Them Die Slowly
7.	Remnants of Rotting

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Our 3rd and final demo was actually meant to be our debut CD. I was in contact with a French label called Chaos Records who has released the CD of a band called Astral Rising. They were interested in Buried Beneath. At first they wanted to do a split with us and a French death metal band called Nambrot. For some reason that fell through and then they wanted to do our debut CD. I sent them all the artwork and everything they would need for the CD layout. This was in April of 1994. Months went by with no word. Suddenly in October I got a package and it was our master tape and all the artwork and partially completed CD layout prints. They said they went bankrupt. We were pissed. So I quickly put together the layout to make it our 3rd demo. On this demo you'll notice a change in the vocal department. This was because Jason had quit to pursue a career in college. We brought in Eric Saner who could growl and scream. This was welcome news to me. Even though Jason was a great guy, I was never a fan of constant deep grunted vocals. Jason also hated having any reverb or echo on his voice in the studio. I liked it. I think echo and reverb adds ambience. So with Eric, we could use some echo. He could also use a wider range of growls and screams. The song writing had also moved forwards. I was writing almost everything now and the guys had finally come around to my idea of incorporating keyboards into some of the songs, especially the masterful "Wallowing In Misery". A short while after the demo came out though, Eric left the band. So Eric only appears on this demo, and he's in the picture. Although Eric was a cool guy and had a good voice, the only issue we'd ever had with him was his "look". He looked like a skater. He was never really into the subject matter of my lyrics, so our parting of ways was probably for the best.

"...And This Too Shall Pass Away" 1994 demo#3

1.	Gothic Sorrow (Intro)
2.	Into a Depressive Shade of Crimson
3.	Spectrum of Impurity
4.	Wallowing in Misery
5.	Moribund
6.	Forgotten Not the Natural Splendour
7.	Outroduction

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So after Eric left the band I began doing the vocals at rehearsals. Since Eric was out of the band I felt it necessary to record my vocals over a couple tracks from the 1994 demo as a new promo just so people could hear how we sounded with my vocals. This became the 1995 promo which was actually supposed to be a 7"ep released by a Slovak label. It never happened. The label ripped us off and fucked us over.
1995 Promo

1.	Gothic Sorrow (Intro)
2.	Into a Depressive Shade of Crimson
3.	Spectrum of Impurity

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We kept rehearsing and I was doing guitar, vocals and keyboards at rehearsals - not an easy task. At this same time Shane informed us that he wanted to play music more in the vein of White Zombie and Alice In Chains. He was also quite pussy-whipped over his girlfriend and I'd had about enough of playing "catch-the-drummer" at rehearsals because Shane always sped shit up or fucked up coming out of drum fills. He never seemed to LEARN! It was frustrating. So when Shane left it was a rather hopeless situation. Rochester was slim pickings for drummers. It was at this time, around August 1995, that we decided to formally end Buried Beneath. Me and Tim and rhythm guitarist Greg formed Night Conquers Day. It was time to start something new and leave the Buried Beneath years behind us. I'm glad we did. Although as you'll see in a later post, there was a Buried Beneath CD released. More on how that came about later.....

alternate logo spelled with the witch-rune alphabet 1993

Buried Beneath 1994: top row is Eric and Tim, bottom row is Shane and Mikael

Buried Beneath 1994: L to R: Shane, Eric, Tim, Mikael

Buried Beneath 1994

And a few old show flyers I found, including one when we opened  for Gorguts & Cannibal Corpse on their "Tomb Of The Mutilated" tour. 

When we opened For Gorguts & Cannibal Corpse on their "Tomb Of The Mutilated" tour

Windbreed & Contortion were 2 other local Rochester bands. Contortion's lead guitarist was our bassists younger brother.

A show with fellow local bands Lethargy (whose drummer Brann Dailor is now in Mastodon) and Astaroth, my previous band - they played as a 3-piece at this show and I didn't have their new logo so I used the one I had drawn up when I was in the band for the flyer. (In 1994 Astaroth recorded a demo as a 3-piece, then they changed their name to Adar and recorded a demo in 1995. Not sure what those guys are doing nowadays.)