After more than a decade of quiet, Burial Tree resurfaces with The Power of Myth, a new full-length album set for release August 1, 2025 via Subcontinental Records. Composed of just three extended tracks, the record sees Monte Cimino revive the project he first started in 2009, now backed by a lineup including ex-Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo, bassist/producer Bill Laswell, drummer Adam McClure, and saxophonist Peter Apfelbaum.
Originally formed in the Bay Area, Burial Tree released Outer Dark (2010) and Rituals (2012), both met with a positive reception before the group disbanded in 2013.
Cimino sporadically issued a single and an EP under the name afterward, but the project largely remained dormant. That changed during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when Monte began laying down demos that didn’t fit with his ongoing projects. These sessions became the foundation of The Power of Myth.
Monte, whose musical background includes hardcore, noise, ambient, metal, and experimental music, has long had a habit of working across disciplines and genres.
A longtime collaborator of Bill Laswell—most recently on their 2021 album Caravan to the Stars under the Dark Matter Halo name—Cimino again brings together a cast of players capable of navigating both structure and improvisation.
On The Power of Myth, Burial Tree moves between heavy post-rock, ambient atmospherics, and sludge-inflected improvisation. It’s all instrumental—there are no lyrics—and it never chases resolution. Instead, it folds in on itself, pacing slowly through meditative noise, distorted weight, and ritualistic layering. As described in the album notes, it’s “the soundtrack to society’s disarray and disillusion.”
Each of the three tracks draws from a specific concept. “Sigils” opens the record with a trio lineup—Cimino on guitar and effects, Laswell on bass and treatments, and McClure on drums—tracking a progression of dense, textured interplay recorded in Rohnert Park and San Francisco, with additional recording at Orange Music, NJ.
“Veve” follows with an entirely different energy: Lombardo’s drumming and electronics paired with Cimino’s guitar and Peter Apfelbaum’s saxophone and megaphone create a volatile, incantatory stretch of sound. Apfelbaum’s parts were recorded at the Lethe Lounge in NYC. The piece references veve diagrams used in voudou practice—symbols meant to channel spirits or deities.
The title track, “The Power of Myth,” closes the record with dual bass work by Cimino and Laswell. More subdued than the first two, it functions as a long meditation on alternate histories and the myths cultures construct to explain their place in the world. It was tracked in Rohnert Park and finished at Orange Music, engineered and mixed by James Dellatacoma alongside Laswell.
The album was mastered by Michael Valentine West. Visual work includes cover art by Alex Eckman-Lawn and layout/design by Arun for Icosa Projects.
Monte cites literary and cinematic sources as central to the Burial Tree ethos: Outer Dark and Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (“these two books have heavily influenced the Burial Tree sound”), Colin Wilson’s The Occult (“an early influence and introduction into a new world of possibilities and thinking”), Allister Crowley’s Magick: Liber ABA, Book 4, and Milo Rigaud’s Veve Diagrammes Rituels du Voudou. He also notes Rosemary’s Baby and The Ninth Gate by Roman Polanski—two films exploring the occult and humanity’s proximity to the demonic.
Burial Tree’s return also signals a renewed focus on high-fidelity production and spatial detail. The album leans heavily on analog textures, room bleed, and layered effects processing, revealing a meticulous approach to both sonic weight and negative space. Each track unfolds with deliberate pacing, allowing acoustic and electronic elements to interact without compression or urgency. Rather than functioning as traditional compositions, these pieces operate more like evolving environments—mixed and mastered with an ear toward dynamic range and immersion, not volume or immediacy. It’s an album built for full-length listening in isolation, where subtle shifts in tone and density become the main event.
