Review: Burning Love - Rotten Thing to Say

 This is an album I've been meaning to check out for some time now, following a continuously massive buzz surrounding it from all fellow rock-fans and experts from Metal Hammer. Formed in Ontario from the ashes of Our Father and Cursed, burning love have been tearing up the local punk scene with a fiery brand of sludge metal and hardcore which has already been displayed this year, turning Hawk Eyes into rockstars of considerable worth and influence. So, I dive into this excitement filled with a major sense of anticipation and delirium to find that the hype is blindingly accurate. Here we have some rock and roll served at it's most distorted.

 The follow up to 2010's Songs for Burning Lovers, Rotten Thing to Say effectively comes and goes, for lack of a better phrase to use. The songs blaze through across a thirteen track album in thirty four minutes, but of course, it just so happens to be thirty four of the finest moments you may ever hear.

 No time is wasted in their assault. Straight from the moment the infectious grooves of Southern inspired bass from Alex "Hawk" Goodall rumbles into action on the album's intro, the band are let loose into action without any holds barred. The likes of Cancer Bats, Converge and Comeback Kid have already proved successful in unleashing brutal punk albums that take a sludgier and bleaker turn and yet Burning Love are very much their own beast across this record.

 Whether they try or not you can't help but identify an extra manner of class in the group's songwriting that lights up guitar work from Pat Marshall and Andrus Merit that lights up No Love and Damage Case effortlessly. And identifying a feeling of class and real emotion isn't always easy when dealing with bands that like to kick things off in a way so tremendously rough and raucously. Even a sense of delicacy and be identified in the tones from frontman Chris Colohan on The Body.

 For the most part however, the band just deal in all out brutality. There isn't a moment of Rotten Thing to Say that isn't brought to life in a frenzy of monolithic growls from Colohan or ear shattering works of bass that often feels like being smashed over the head with a thick plank covered in splinters. In the best possible way. Every song makes you want to explode with rage and beat up your siblings, but unlike other bands that fit such descriptions there's always a freshness with each new track. A filthy freshness anyway, which is no easy task.

 It's actually a little difficult to think of any other kind of explanation for Rotten Thing to Say, save for that it's an album that is a scorcher all the way through. It takes the best of hardcore and the best of sludge and rams them together with an extra dose of distortion and certainly, if you dig your punk music with a heavier element, you're in for such a massive treat it's unreal. Truly a deserving band worthy of all the buzz if there ever was one.

Burning Love's Rotten Thing to Say is out now via Southern Lord.