Burnt by the Sun - Heart of Darkness

August 6, 2009

Reviewer: Matt

I almost feel bad about giving this album a less than positive review.  Their third full length and first release since 2003 (notwithstanding a 2004 live album and one track on a 2007 split with Car Bomb), Heart of Darkness should’ve catapulted Burnt by the Sun to the top of their genre.  Since 2003, however, Burnt by the Sun’s brand of metalcore - at it’s best still rather formulaic and dull - has been further commercialized by the likes of Lamb of God, Chimaira, and Killswitch Engage, far inferior bands who, astonishingly and embarrassingly, have been dubbed by the mainstream press as the “New Wave of American Heavy Metal.”  Excuse me while I vomit at the prospect of modern metalcore representing the United States’ finest contribution to metal, but if any band deserved to be splashed across magazine covers when this genre was exploding a few years ago, it wais Burnt by the Sun.

You know what you’re getting: Hardcore vocals and straightforward death- and thrash-metal-inspired riffs with a lot of groove.  A professional, meaty production.  It sounds great, and Burnt by the Sun are fairly accomplished musicians, able to navigate shifting rhythms and comparatively dynamic riffing better than most of their peers, but their formula is run-of-the-mill in 2009, indistinguishable from the multitude of bands that have come and gone since their last album. 

Heart of Darkness has a few startlingly bright moments, but they are too few and far between the endless plod of recycled Pantera riffs and sedated drumming. In one of the album’s great missteps, the band in “The Great American Dream Machine” plops a loping, unrecognizable verse and chorus between a brutal opening riff and a really cool breakdown.  Yes, there are breakdowns on Heart of Darkness.  This is, lest we forget and Burnt by the Sun fail to remind us, metalcore, and breakdowns are mandatory.

I’m convinced that metalcore remains a viable genre.  Bands like The Blinding Light and Pulling Teeth continue to release quality material you won’t hear on MTV2.  Burnt by the Sun deserve credit for helping to pioneer metalcore in a marketable form, but for an album marking both a comeback after a long hiatus and the band’s swansong, Heart of Darkness is unimpressive and irrelevant.

Release Date: August 18th, 2009
Label: Relapse Records

TRACK LISTING

1.  Inner Station
2.  Cardiff Giant
3.  F-Unit
4.  A Party to the Unsound Method
5.  There Will Be Blood
6.  Goliath
7.  Rust I Future Primitive
8.  Beacon
9.  American Dream Machine
10.  The Wolves Are Running

Total playing time:  34:17

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