Burden

It would be all too simple to dismiss this young band as complete beginners doing nothing more than rehashing the ideas of their idols. While this would ultimately be true, there are things to say in defence of Finland’s Burden. What is heard on this demo is a show of integrity and enthusiasm not too often found anywhere, and even if the music isn’t terribly original, the band can write good and memorable riffs as well as put together decent songs of unusually varied nature. In my book, this is more than enough.

Two of the three tracks offer a fairly basic form of death metal – not melodic, not technical, not brutal, just death metal, plain and simple. The opener ‘Embraced by Anguish’ is the more ambitious, with a solid structure reaching beyond the most obvious straightforward-ness and not one bad riff. What’s more, the track has enough musical content to not only endure but actually require multiple listens. The band has clearly understood the importance of putting the best first. As opposed to this, final track ‘The Eyes of the Fallen’ is far simpler in all imaginable ways – not bad, as such, but certainly not exceptional either.

A huge plus to Burden is in order for the fact that, even though every single note screams familiarity, it’s hard to pinpoint any individual band being ripped off here. In terms of overall sound on the aforementioned two tracks, imagine ‘Spiritual Healing’-era Death covering ’Domination’-era Morbid Angel while trying to sound like recent Behemoth – only with slower tempos. A rather clumsy description, I know, and there are other valid comparisons, but this should at least give you an idea.

The middle track ‘Farewell’ is something else entirely. A melodic mid-tempo piece with all clean vocals, one that an average folk/black metal group could well leave out when preparing an album – but I mean that in the most positive way possible. It’s quite simple musically, but the main melodies are decent at least. The chorus is actually quite catchy (in a good way). With a more experienced vocalist, this track could sound a bit like recent Primordial, which is always a good thing. I wouldn’t mind Burden moving on to this direction on their future releases.

On the whole, the demo suffers a great deal from a number of things. The riffs and (the few) melodies are relatively simple, almost like they were the first ones to come to mind; the (somewhat flashy but not very interesting) guitar solos are overemphasized; the playing is pretty sloppy, especially in faster parts; the vocals – both growls and cleans – could use some work and give a feeling of “playing it safe”, so to speak. However, this is nothing you wouldn’t hear on most first demos anyway, and as beginning bands go, Burden at least has potential. I like their music (to an extent), and have no reason to believe you wouldn’t too.