Review Summary: Burn the Priest is Lamb of God before the name change, and with the name change came drastic musical change
Lamb of God is a well known band today, there are very little people that know of Burn the Priest though. Before Lamb of God was the beloved Groove metal band they are today they were a much heavier almost grindcore-ish band. The only member of LoG that isn't featured on this cd is Willie Adler. In his spot is Abe Spear who plays a very different style than Willie.
What was good about the album: This cd is fueled with an amazing amount of adreneline all the way through, its sounds like Randy is truly pissed off when he shrieks. The drumming is great, and plays a fairly big part in the mix. The album isn't that long so it doesn't drag as much as some albums can. The album runs a little over 30 minutes.
The drumming on the album is amazing, he plays extremely fast and I see no flaws in that department. On Resurrection #9 some of Randy's highs remind me of Dani Filth's. The slow paced songs on the album seem to be the highlights, Goatfish is a slower paced song that could be great but it suffers from being too short.
There is a little Southern influence in some of the riffs and songs, this is most notable on the song Buckeye, throwing that in the mix helps this album so it doesn't drag so much. The guitarwork on this album is much simpler then the style that Lamb of God play today, which is not a bad thing because it fits the rest of the instruments, and they all mesh together great.
What was bad about the album: Randy's unique vocal style is rarely heard throughout the album, through most of the album you can't even tell that he is on vocals. This wouldn't be such a problem if there was more variation used in the vocal approach. Most of the album is just all out shrieks, there are a few spoken word parts kind of like at the beginning of Laid to Rest. A growl is thrown in here an there but there is very little variation throughout the cd. This causes the album to drag a bit. The spoken word parts can get a bit annoying and take away from whats going on in the song. I follow all of Randys projects because i can't get enough of his voice, not having his unique sound on this album threw me off a bit but its definetely better than Halo of Locust where his growls sounded liked a mad gorilla. Some of the songs on the album seem to have the same structure, and some just flat out sound the same.
Like most grind songs most of the songs are very short, which in this albums case is a bad thing, just when your getting into the song it changes to the next there are a few songs on the disc that are above 3 minutes but not that many. Even if you don't like Lamb of God I reccomend you check out this cd, even though its not the best album ever to grace the earth its still a pretty good album.
If you like Lamb of God and your thinking about checking this out, it is most comparable to New American Gospel. Overall I give this album a 3 out of 5. This album isn't getting an average rating from me because of how good the instruments mesh together. The reason its not higher than a 3 is because of the lack of vocal variation and the fact that some of the songs have the same structure.
