Review Summary: You'd swear that Greece has deserts...
Stoner rock and desert rock are often used interchangeably. And while the notion that the two are the same genre is not true in the slightest, it makes complete sense for anyone who has heard a considerable bit of the genre. Many of the field's most well known artists e.g. Kyuss, Sleep, and Fu Manchu, are rather well known for hailing from the desert. While none of those were the first of the genre, they helped set a sound that has shaped one of the most common, yet irresistible soundscapes of stoner rock with their atmospheric grooves: driving through the hot, yet tranquil Californian desert during a pink, fading, sunset. All alone with no end in plain sight, and only the music playing out of the stereo keeping oneself company. And with the Greek band Burn the Sun, we are reminded of why we came to love that lonely desert road in the first place.
Burn the Sun are a relatively new stoner rock band from Athens, Greece, they started out in 2010 and have only done a few concerts and a demo preceding this. This is especially surprising because Crack of Dawn is incredibly mature in almost every aspect. The artwork looks like it was drawn by a professional, looking wonderfully crisp and eye-catching. Added to that is the sheer amount of talent displayed here. Stamatis Spyropoulos's voice is perfectly suited to the songs he is playing, with an almost mystical quality to his voice which blends in with the echoing fuzz of the guitars. Even the production, which is usually minimal in records of this field to keep a raw, punk-like sound, sounds crisp and clean as if it was done for a major studio label-through each of the 5 tracks on this EP.
For a 5 track EP, Crack of Dawn is surprisingly diverse. With influences ranging from blues folk to sludge metal to even ambient, Crack of Dawn covers a surprising amount of ground in its runtime. The album starts with a short yet chill title track that sets the mood for the rest of the album: laid back and trippy. The next track:
O.C.D. has the hardest riffs on the album, accompanied by a bluesy feel and top-notch screams on Spyropoulos's part. The fastest paced song on the album:
B1tchslap follows, accompanied by raging snares of Aggelos Spyropoulos's percussion. The band then takes a turn for the ambient with
Thrallis before drawing to a close with the 12-minute epic
Desert Flowers, which effectively sums up the entire experience, thus bringing Crack of Dawn to a satisfying close.
Crack of Dawn makes for a surprisingly satisfying listen with only 5 tracks, with its beautiful production and top-notch musicianship which gives a classic stoner-rock feel that recent music has been rather lacking, what with most bands of the genre going more for vicious riffs than psychedelic atmosphere. That's not to say that this doesn't riff...rather to the contrary: it manages to balance its riffs with its atmosphere to take what made classic stoner bands so great and conjure that magic in a modern setting.
