Product Description
Irishman Dom Martin is a multi award winning artist from Belfast Northern Ireland.
The 34 year old's music is steeped in the atmospheric celtic hallways of the past with many likening his style and stage presence to the likes of the late greats Rory Gallagher and Belfast's own Gary Moore. Equally at home with an acoustic guitar in hand tearing at the heartstrings of the audience, he's an inducted UK Blues Hall of Fame Artist as a result of three consecutive acoustic awards, and his trusty telecasters and Les Pauls that lead his power trio, delivering him two consecutive Instrumentalist of The Year Awards, Dom tours internationally on a regular basis and has built a reputation for his emotional and powerful legendary shows. His latest album "Buried In The Hail" garnered rave reviews and was voted Best UK Blues Album of 2024 at the UK Blues Awards. Whilst touring the UK and Europe in 2023/2024, many tracks from Buried In The Hail were recorded live along with several from his previous albums, Spain To Italy and A Savage Life. The result is Buried Alive, a double live album by one of the most exciting artists to come out of Ireland in a very long time.
DOM MARTIN
Buried Alive
Forty Below Records
The new double live album Buried Alive exhibits the range of artistry that has made Dom Martin one of Europe’s hot properties. Still reasonably young, the lanky Belfast native has already won a trunk full of awards, mostly for his exceptional abilities as a guitarist. Yet despite his flowing mane and cover art that suggests yet another heavy-handed blues-rocker, Martin is no one-trick pony. He’s equally at home in both an electric power trio and a stripped-down acoustic setting. In concert, he typically switches off between these two musical strands; this live release, comprised solely of originals, presents them separately on one acoustic and one electric CD.
Martin touches both ends of the dynamic spectrum on disc one, from pin-drop quiet to loud and aggressive. Backed effectively by bassist Ben Graham and drummer Aaron McLaughlin, the Irishman serves up fat-toned bottleneck on opener “Daylight I Will Find” and a brilliant example of electric fingerstyle guitar on “Belfast Blues.”
A pair of haunting and elegant songs, “Government” and “Buried In The Hail,” sit in between, each of them beautifully played and sung. Later, with tracks like “Unhinged” and “12 Gauge,” Martin and his bandmates delve into the heavier side of their repertoire. They rock out convincingly, but some of their individuality goes missing in the process. Nonetheless, the band shows they can ratchet up the intensity with the best of them.
Disc two reprises several of the songs just mentioned in solo acoustic versions, adding many more. Here we encounter the gentler side of Martin, but never does his music feel light or trivial. Instead, dark musical and lyrical currents abound, inviting comps to Robert Johnson or Skip James even where he veers away from the traditional blues form. Martin makes good use of the seemingly natural sustain of at least one of the concert venues where the album was recorded, letting the notes he plays ring out and layer upon one another, creating an almost church-like air of reverence.
A live album is generally not the best place to dive into an artist’s discography. But for those that haven’t yet discovered Dom Martin, Buried Alive will do just fine. Moody and introspective on the whole, it covers the full breadth of his catalog in a sound quality that rivals any studio recording.
– Vincent Abbate