Burning Love - Rotten Thing To Say (Southern Lord)
In hardcore circles, Chris Colohan is a legendary figure. First attaining fame in the mid-90s as the lead vocalist in Toronto-based hardcore powerhouse Left For Dead, he went on to front over half a dozen other dark, heavy groups, all of which produced extremely high-quality hardcore music that went on to influence the direction of the entire genre for years to come. Groups like The Swarm and Cursed still command a great deal of respect today, years after they broke up, and Colohan's rage-filled vocals and cynically intelligent lyrics are a big part of why that's true. Burning Love, Colohan's current project, is a bit of a departure from his previous work--instead of focusing on the metallic influences that drove The Swarm, Cursed, and a lot of his other bands over the years, Burning Love exhibit a much stronger rock n' roll influence, sticking with a steady midtempo rhythm for the most part rather than utilizing the blast beats, breakdowns, and quick tempo changes that marked the work of his earlier bands.
And you know, at first, I was a little put off by that. I'd come to associate a particular sound with Colohan's work, and Burning Love's sound was not only different but noticeably less brutal, which was off-putting. Of course, it makes sense--Burning Love features none of the longtime collaborators (such as guitarist Christian McMaster or drummer Mike Maxymuik) who'd been with him through his time in Left For Dead, The Swarm, and Cursed. A singer doesn't determine the sound of a band on his own, and the fact that Burning Love's instrument-playing members were all younger people from the Toronto scene, many of whom had previously been in the band Our Father, should have indicated that things would be slightly different in this new project. I wasn't really won over, though, until Burning Love's excellent live performance opening for Coliseum at the Bike Lot in the summer of 2010. The midtempo grooves that had come across as monotonous and somewhat boring on record really connected for me live; I started to realize that what Burning Love gave up by sacrificing powerful breakdowns and speedy crescendos from their music was more than compensated for by the sheer, driving power of their songs. Getting hit with a dozen of them in a live and loud setting was an exciting experience, one that led me to completely change my tune about a band I'd previously written off as a letdown.
So when I started hearing news of a new Burning Love album earlier this year, I was stoked. The advance single, Black Widow, featuring the album track "Karla" and a non-LP cover, made me really happy a couple of weeks ago. Now the whole LP is here, and it's doing the same thing. The driving midtempo grooves are in heavy evidence, as I expected. However, Kurt Ballou's production gives Rotten Thing To Say a dark, heavy atmosphere that I wasn't hearing on earlier Burning Love material. This production style actually serves to remind me a lot more of Colohan's work in Cursed than any of the songs on their first LP, Songs For Burning Lovers, ever did. "Hateful Comforts" is a great example of this new/old wrinkle on the Burning Love sound, with its fast, choppy opening leading into a chaotic buildup that, when it eventually drops into a more typical driving midtempo riff, feels a lot like a Cursed-style breakdown. Meanwhile, "The Body" uses the kind of understated, minor-key melodies that stand out on recent records by former tourmates Coliseum. Colohan's vocals are always harsh and powerful, but the melodic guitar leads that make multiple appearances on this album add nuance to songs that still retain every ounce of the heaviness they'd have regardless.
There are a few fast songs here as well--"Tremors" is only 40 seconds long and blows by in the hectic fashion of early Left For Dead tunes like "Skin Graft." But the fact that it's Burning Love and not Left For Dead comes through in the brief, wailing solo at the end of the song, which feels like it's lifted from a Motorhead record. "Pig City I," meanwhile, has a real old-school feel; fast like an 82-era hardcore tune rather than a 90s-era fastcore song, the distortion is also a good bit thinner here than it is anywhere else on the album. The result comes across as a conscious attempt at genre recreation, and that may be exactly what it is. But it's still interesting to hear these songs from a band who've previously had a very monolithic sound--it seems like they're branching out a little bit, exploring the limits of their sound and figuring out what else they're capable of. In a way, maybe Burning Love and I have met in the middle--even as I learned to appreciate their focus on a uniformity of sound and tempo, they've begun to add more dynamics than existed in their sound previously. Despite a greater sonic variance than on previous work, Rotten Thing To Say still comes across more as a unified piece of work than a collection of songs, and for that reason, it's hard to single out particular tracks as highlights. Regardless, though, this is an album that maintains a high-quality sound throughout. Both longtime Chris Colohan fans, and those for whom this album is their first experience with his work, will find plenty to like here.
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Burning Love will be at Strange Matter (929 W. Grace St.) on Tuesday, July 3, performing alongside Southern Lord labelmates Black Breath (from Seattle), Martyrdod (from Sweden), Enabler (from Milwaukee, WI), and RVA's own Balaclava. Also appearing will be Atlanta's Dead In The Dirt. Doors open at 7 PM. Tickets are $12 in advance, and can be purchased HERE.