Burned by Love

Its kinetically fierce, not to mention starkly retro and gay (as in colorful), Jay Priest-ly cover art, notwithstanding, Providence, Rhode Island's up-and-rising Demon Chrome, with its latent four-track EP quaternity titled Burned By Love, has flame-broiled and rocketed itself to the top of my plenipotentiary playlist, and thus, at drop of an Atlantic power (g)love. Reasons behind such glorious elegy have tons to do with quartet's unassuming, scrapyard-like flair, commencing, rather wryly, to vengefully mournful and brief tune of Sad Wings/Rocka Rolla clean, progressive guitar, before morphing into greasy and raw, Sacred Leather-meets-Black Trip alchemy fit to disorder on opener "Tactical Response Development".

This winning opener consists of six-minute bramble of smoothly segueing hooks and variables - before kicking its electric, yet none-too-eclectic, spurs, in a most viscous and sly, classic 1980s metal mien with the 3 Inches of Blood/Iron Maiden "Flash of the Blade" style, pulverizing pull-off riff-age leading into "Half Past Midnight", here repeated for our most audacious convenience, from 2018's innocuous, as-long four-track EP, Chrome Demo(n)*, which assays both Motorhead's uproarious "Killed By Death" and JP's less deft "Desert Plains".

Hey, whence pours sugar on head, it rains!

Vestiges of Black Trip's Joseph Tholl, yet of an even stringier and more bellicose countenance, rasps ears beyond point of enrapture - particularly on Coronary/Midnight Dice evoking "Burned By Love", a hard-rocking, rapid-fire nail-biter which features estrogen laced bonus in form of female choral vocals. Alternately, impressions of Midnight's Athenar nailed me to wall during "Tactical Response Deployment", whose lyrics foretell explosive doomsday. Solos exude loads of innovation, with a bit of mellifluous dazzle intertwined with raucous frazzle. Insofar as battery goes, the drums possess an organically genial, down-to-earth feel - almost improvisational, whilst the bass, although a tad buried in mix, kowtows in graceful form beneath guitars' richly astringent stride. If anything, both the songs' structural laissez-faire and gritty instrument tones, which denote a particularly outright proto-metal-ish countenance throughout the middle tracks, give off impression this EP was released during epoch of JP's Screaming For Vengeance or perhaps Point of Entry.

The eight minute, slip-sliding "Chrome Demon" finale approaches UFO/Dokken/Thin Lizzy/MSG territory, skittering late 70's heavy rock moxie with early 80s, American chutzpah in style of Rhodes' riffed Ozzy, Riot or Savage. At any rate, its late-game, drawn-out, striking and wildly inflected emotional soloing is soul-edifying. What's more, I challenge all without sundry to vacate the following, catchy-as-Hades refrain from ye ole vestigial brain-pan, and thus, at drop of a dollar store Halloween mask. Suffice it to say (sans ix-nay), am fully absorbed with Demon Chrome's Burned By Love EP, and, alongside Philly's equally gruff and original, at times downright epic, Blazon Rite - author of most cryptic n' cool Dulce Bellum Inexpertis EP, this past Spring - cannot hold still in rabidly vanguard-ed anticipation of sure-to-be-killer full-length debuts.

(Hence, a combination of Crayola markers and cybernetic repute.)

*For once, yours cheekily is nary responsible for artists' choice of parenthesesal mnemonics. Also, said artwork was designed by the grand Demon Chrome nabob himself, Dylan Kulpa.