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burn blackmagnolia
Artist: Burn
Title: Black Magnolia
Genre: Dark Rock / Dark Wave
Release Date: 20th January 2012
Label: Blind Records


Album Review

I have to confess, that my first thoughts were like: “Oh, another band, which is trying to swim the same (deep) waters as their obvious English heroes…” [You know who I mean!], when our paths crossed some five years ago. The more surprised I was when I now read the band’s vita, especially the movements of the last year! 2011 not only saw the release of the band’s debut album (‘The Truth’), but in addition to that some prominent names had their fingers in the pie. No one else but the keyboarder and producer of UNHEILIG (Henning Verlage) helped to put the final touches to the album and (nothing to wonder about) the band became part of the current UNHEILIG tour! A probable stroke of luck for BURN, cause the quartet from Münster is around for 15 years after all without facing popularity on that grand scale. But now all seems to run like clockwork, because only one year after, the band comes up with ‘Black Magnolia’, their second fulltime-album (what marks another collaboration with H. Verlage from UNHEILIG).

Those who know BURN from their early days and those, who felt attracted with the classic Dark Rock / Dark Wave from the band’s firstling, can feel reassured again, on ‘Black Magnolia’ the guys remain true to themselves and created 10 melancholic and catchy songs, a bit rougher at the edges than expected perhaps. Just the opener ‘Ninety-Nine Floors’ is a good paradigm for the ground the band is moving on musically. Sweet melodies are holding hands with grinding guitars and floating keyboards, back by impelling rhythms, on which the vocals are making their emotional and energetic rounds. It’s tough and it’s fragile, and it’s remarkable for that combination. ‘Negative Me’ has an impressing drive, making you feel like being on the run when drum and bass make you easily jump on them. It’s clear and it’s obvious but at least since that moment you awake to the fact that the similarities of the voice (up to now still very charming and conveniently reminding) will make it hard NOT to look always for parallels and analogies to that other band, which (as I already pointed out) seems to had a great influence on the band’s musical growing up and talking of the devil.

‘Why don’t You find out for Yourself’ flows in almost true CURE-fashion. The waving lead-guitar rains on wide fields of strings, echoing the rhythm that takes care to safe the tempo for an anticipated sadness soaked with that bitter-sweet heartache, what makes melancholy so adorable. Ironically in that nearly perfect cure-ish moment singer Felix seems to remember his voices facets, blinding out that wailing and sobbing for lowering the octaves and I have to admit: it works! It slows down all these unwanted but obvious associations and paints a new atmospherically filling colour on the canvas. But unfortunately just for a moment, because with the title track ‘Black Magnolia’ we’re back on the habitual way and even if there’s no joy in saying this; reaching that point the vocals start to annoy a bit. It’s rising up to levels of howling and lamentation, which risk the danger of losing the musical solid ground and the emotional impression, especially when the track is such a lead weight, like ground fog that hardly leaves the floor with its low tune guitars and anchoring key-scapes. But maybe it’s also the lyrics that cause this strange taste on the tongue, because phrases like “Moon of blood”, “black blossoms”, “darkness” and the compulsive lunar eclipse, seem a bit too striking for avoiding a kind of corny clamminess, which is hard to get off the skin.

So I’m not sure if it’s coincidence or the rainy blackness out of my window, but ‘The Pouring Rain’ seems not to help to get things better! The fragile vocals (apparently uncertain of their origins in a boys or a girls throat) breathe like tepid autumn wind over a resting ocean of glinting guitars and purling synths, creating a mood of void and emptiness I’m not certain of if it’s wanted, because it feels disruptively motionless and pale. It’s strange, but in those moments, the band wants to be most emotional, they sound the most static and a little… shiftless. That’s why it is appeasing that soon after we reach the satisfying level of the opening tracks again. ‘Ultraviolet’ is something to dance to, with an energizing rhythm in a skilful conversation between bass and drum. So as ‘Bunny’, whose hard-edged guitars face electronic gimmicks and a strong pumping beat (a bit like CURE´s ‘Wrong Number’ experiment… Oh, sorry for that again!)

‘It lives’ follows the same cadenced pattern with its dominating drums, sawing guitars and a swirling, almost funky bass. (Which does a great job throughout the whole album!) ‘Kaleidoscope Skies’ is candy floss-like Dark-Pop at its best. Catching harmonies, maundering and pondering convincing vocals (I insist on saying that!) and an atmosphere of a blue summer sky, which feels the fall crawling in. Melancholy to feel well with. And finally ‘Here comes the Flood’, which is a solid outro for making march by all those stylistics the band has a knack for: a slight case of sadness, emotional energy and density, a catching chorus and the harmonic balance between shallow keyboards and pressing rhythms.

So what is the scale displaying? At its heart, ‘Black Magnolia’ is an album BURN can be proud of. Largely well-arranged and confidently performed, the songs offer an entertaining hearing, an emotional trip through a moody and lavishly detailed autumn forest, which is easy to enjoy. Only when it gets too emotional, (halfway the album) when the instruments get bounded in chains for clearing the way for some (unnecessary) kind of a heartache-atmosphere, it gets a bit too tacky and boring and (ironically) a bit too plastic and sterile. So I think the album’s best moments are to find when the band doesn’t give a fuck about calculated climate and structure of the surface and just plays straight on, like from the marrow of their bones, because it’s not the atmosphere that dictates the song, it’s the song that creates the atmosphere!


Tracklist

01. Ninety-Nine Floors
02. The negative me
03. Why don’t you find out for yourself
04. Black Magnolia
05. The pouring Rain
06. Ultraviolet
07. Bunny
08. It lives!
09. Kaleidoscope Skies
10. Here comes the Flood


Line-up

Felix Friberg – Vocals
Sven Krachten  – Guitars
Felix Flögel – Bass
Jörg Schwaer – Drums


Website

http://www.burnmusic.de


Cover Picture

burn blackmagnolia


Rating

Music: 6
Sound: 9
Total: 7.5 / 10


Buy the album here!


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