Pros: One relentless sonic b*tchslap of fury and deepseeded issues
Cons: Apparently, they only have eight and a half minutes worth of issues!
The Bottom Line: Pop it in, wear protection and get ready to p!ss off the neighbors... actually being burnt by the sun is probably safer than the damage inflicted by this EP.
supraliminal's Full Review: Burnt by the Sun [EP] by Burnt By The Sun
Ah yes.... if you're in the mood for some HEAVY flavored, agressive and rather angry sounding metal then check out Burnt By The Sun for a somewhere in between grind and death and just annoyed thrash hit and run (you're the victim ace). I'm not entirely sure if these guys are supposed to be grind or noise or thrash.... I mean this ep is only 4 songs and eight and a half minutes long... I'm not even sure what the price is, but obviously if it's much at all I'd encourage you to download it. In any case, this is like a teaser that doesn't even leave me with a very good sense of what genre they play, so I guess this is right up the alley of anybody who likes some heavy p!ssed off music with songs around two minutes in length.
Buffy starts the mental mosh off, a barrage of emphatic heavy as lead riffs and not-quite-blast-beats. The music goes for maximum damage, just refraining from ever becoming quite catchy, relying on penetration and pummeling over grooving you to death. One weak point on this song and the ep in general is I don't think this music really needed a babbling, incoherent lead.... shoulda just doubled the grinding rhythmic havoc in my opinion.
You Will Move follows, a kind of psychotic hammering headache that just won't stop throbbing in your head... slower and harder hitting, but still not quite catchy by any means. At this point I'm appreciating the chaos and the kick to the teeth, but I'm also wondering if it wouldn't have been better with an actually catchy/groovy/foot tapping section to let you come up for air. The lead guitars are actually mostly relevant on this song, but nothing to write home about.
Lizard-skin Barbie is the third track, clocking in at exactly two minutes, it's squarely somewhere in between the first two tracks, alternately frenetic hyper combinations to the gut and sledge hammers to the skull. At one point the guy is venting vocally like a complete maniac on tourette's a la System Of A Down on steroids, and this song also features the closest to catchy and fist pumping section on the entire opus.
The song closes with The Fish Under The Sea Dance, which actually comes close to having some rational form of attack... but not quite, still just a random beat down. It's kinda somewhere between Pantera on steroids and your average grind band.... the song closes with a passage I can actually tap my feet to were it not for the barrage of snare (but still not blast beats) as opposed to double bass rolling (which now that I think about it, that's another thing that could have made this even better).
Well, this isn't exactly grind, more like sludgy, heavy thrash crashing into grind perhaps, but more to the point I really don't like most grind.... so if I like this album as much as I do, I would venture to say that is quite a statement. I mean, like I said anything they decided to tinker with, from leads that make sense to double bass to more groove would only improve the band.... they are already doing everything the wrong way as far as I am usually concerned, yet I like it. I look forward to the full length. For anyone who likes in your face metal minus atmosphere, boards, any sense of conforming to rhythm as we know it (ok, they aren't quite that out there).... basically the trademark Relapse Records sound, grind to death and only the occasional other band in between... give this a listen.... and if you want more than eight minutes of abuse, they also have a split EP with Luddite Clone, who is similar in style but not as good. Just remember, no your stereo isn't broken, there really is only 8:35 of music.
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