Burnsred: Burnsred (2011)

Review

So I have this really tight space between two of my upper right molars, and when I chew gum I usually get some of it stuck in there. I was chewing some Winterfresh gum for a while, and when it lost its flavor I spit it out.

Then I started munching on some "zen party" trail mix, which has rice crackers, sesame sticks, green peas, almonds, cashews, and wasabi peas. This was new to me, as I had never tried it before. It was kind of OK, but not great. There were some familiar flavors mixed together in a way that wasn't all that compelling. Then some of the gum stuck between my teeth got dislodged, and I tasted the mint with it. It wasn't horrible, but who wants minty, salty, wasabi crackers and nuts?

Are you wondering where I'm going with this?


This describes what I was actually doing while listening to the self-titled debut from Burnsred, a San Francisco sludge/post-doom band. And it aptly describes my experience of listening to the album. I found familiar flavors mixed in unfamiliar ways--a cup of My Dying Bride inspired melody, two cups of Isis loud/quiet/loud dynamic, a little post-black, a pinch of mid-paced death/doom, a dash of synth organ, and two tablespoons of dissonance. It's a recipe with a lot of good ingredients, but the resulting dish is far from appetizing.

I don't know why, exactly, this is so dull. There's no reason this recipe shouldn't work. Perhaps the riffs are stale. Perhaps the proportions are wrong. Perhaps it's a somewhat flat production. It just isn't to my taste, even though all the ingredients seem to say it's tailor-made for me.



The Verdict: I would pass this one up. It lost my attention a few times along the way, and just wasn't all that interesting. I give it 1 out of 5 stars.