The Burner is a puzzling one. On the one hand, some of its tracks are not only impressive for their time (this is gritty math rock that was recorded between 1990-1992 and released post band breakup, with even tracks like 1, the only one featuring vocals really, or 3 both strongly prefacing TDEP's mathcore offerings), but also bangers in their own right. The aforementioned TDEP-esque 3, but also the groovy as hell 5 and 7 are very cool tracks. But on the other hand, the album can feel very sluggish at times despite its stylistically obliged constant changes, either because the tracks themselves feel directionless, slow or weird for the purpose of being weird (see for example 4 or 9, especially its first half), or because they dont feel cohesive with one another - an impression taht probably stems from this being a posthumous collation of two EPs plus three unreleased tracks, rather than a record conceived as an album by the band from the outset. I don't really know how to rate this one, but I feel like the points it gains from being such an early record reminding of much later things are counterbalanced by the ones it loses from lack of structure and consistency. 3.7
Bump |
