Burnt By The Sun - Heart of Darkness

I just don’t know where to start! Perhaps I could mention that, while I was listening to ‘Heart of Darkness’ for the first time, the thing that puzzled me the most is just how on earth these four grown-up fellows apparently with normal lives and steady, above-average jobs have crafted such ferocious and pissed off heavy music. Throughout ten songs, Burnt By The Sun sound as if they’d been carjacked with extreme violence and abandoned in the middle of a deserted region buck-naked and without any means to make it to civilization. Fucking and downright angry!
Quite simply, from the rampaging opener ‘Inner Station’ to the scorching pummel of closing track ‘The Wolves Are Running’, ‘Heart of Darkness’ is an aggressive album that clatters along with a ferocious and hungry intent.
Stylistically, it sees the four-piece returning to the more mid-paced, streamlined and in your face approach of their debut recording ‘Soundtrack to the Personal Revolution’, though occasionally they throw out some of those frenzied grind riffs that were prevalent on ‘The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good’. However, ‘Heart of Darkness’ is essentially a metal-hardcore album at heart with meaty and heavy riffs powering forward with an aggressive drive, a sledgehammer percussion and anger-filled and vitriolic shouts provided by Mike Olender.
Sadly, the band have regrettably announced that this is their last record, so it seems that ‘Heart of Darkness’ will likely become the last of them. If that’s the case, then I’m entirely convinced that Burnt by the Sun are going out in style with their strongest and most intense material ever released. (8.5/10)

David Alexandre

Band info: www.myspace.com/BurntByTheSun
Label info: www.relapse.com
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