Review Summary: Your colour green.
Titan is a Canadian band that play in a style more akin to hardcore punk than its sludgy riffs may suggest. Almost an hour of near non-stop, incredibly dense hardcore. With that said, it becomes very clear that Titan harbours a very specific sound. Sometimes so specific, that it becomes a bit of a burden on the bigger picture. Their mere intensity is fresh, but you can surely suspect to hear a lot of things that have been done before in sludge metal and hardcore punk.
In that sense, you could say that
Burn is like a slight variation of a well known colour. Instead of going to the hardware store and buying just plain green, you buy “moss green,” or something of that nature. In beside all the colours, each green has a slightly different shade, relative to each other. Once you've painted the room, to anyone else not aware of what you bought, the room is just…a green room. Outside the context of all those little shaded squares inside the hardware store, it’s stand alone identity is only relative to it’s surroundings.
Burn is only really interesting if you want to treat it like an object, rather than music. It does have its own texture if you want to compare it directly to its contemporaries, but on it’s own, it’s just green. It’s often difficult for people to overcome these generalizations, and Titan doesn't really address that problem. Though the song writing and musicianship are well proportioned, there is a lacking in ambition.
Burn is very safe in that manner. Perhaps even safer that the influences that drive it. They’re in a black box and they didn't even bother to feel around for the edges. Not to say it’s a bad album by any means, it’s certainly worth a listen.
There is definitely a fair level of enjoyment to be gained from this album. The enjoyment comes from the fierce production, and some of the better more stand out songs on the album. For example, Titan is good at creating long monstrous songs. ‘Myopic,’ ‘Warmer Months’ and the albums undeniable center piece, ‘Telepaths’ make the album worth listening to. The tempo alone gets your heart pumping.
Burn certainly does show a lot of potential. It’s a massive slab of marble that is perfect in quality, it just hasn't been chiseled yet. As Titan are still young, they have a lot of time to grow. Even compared to a lot of existing bands in the scene, they have a slight advantage because of their ambiguity. It will be interesting to see what they come up with in the future.
