Planning for Burial

Planning for Burial sounds like the physical manifestation of a long, gray winter. It is music that exists in the cracks between genres, where the hazy textures of shoegaze meet the crushing weight of doom metal and the skeletal intimacy of slowcore. The sound is defined by massive, distorted guitar drones that feel like they are being played through a thick layer of fog, anchored by the rhythmic, mechanical thud of a drum machine that sounds like a distant heartbeat in an empty factory.

What makes Thom Wasluck's project so distinctive is the sense of profound, lived-in loneliness. Unlike many shoegaze acts that aim for a celestial or psychedelic feeling, this music is grounded in the mundane and the industrial. It is bedroom-produced but sounds monolithic, using tape hiss and lo-fi imperfections not as a gimmick, but as a way to coat the melodies in a layer of grime and nostalgia. The vocals often drift between a fragile whisper and a desperate, distant scream, buried so deep in the mix that they feel like memories you can't quite grasp.

If you are new to this sound, start with the album Below the House. It perfectly captures the project's ability to pivot from quiet, piano-led mourning to absolute walls of noise. It is the ideal companion for those times when you want to lean into the melancholy rather than escape it, providing a strange kind of comfort through its sheer, unvarnished honesty.