Burn Down Rome

Devotion

Written by: PP on 16/12/2008 04:28:36

We should've seen it coming. Despite their repulsive image and ultra-aggressive live sound, Gallows made it really fucking big when they signed a million pound record deal with Warner Brothers last year for three albums overall, now they're playing damn near arena-sized venues in the UK. What's more, they've also given a whole bunch of youngsters inspiration, and as you might expect, a year or two after the original release of "Orchestra Of Wolves", the clone bands start homing in.

Burn Down Rome, who are also based in the UK, are one of those clone bands who tries to copy Gallows as much as possible to advance their own agenda. Although on their debut album "Devotion", it seems like they are having an identity crisis. For starters, their vocalist sounds exactly like Frank Carter minus some passion and quirky lyrical output, and furthermore, for about half of the album the band is more than happy to pummel away at hardcore punk speeds with garage-production and generally aggressive delivery. Sounds familiar? That's exactly what Gallows sound like. For the rest of the time, Burn Down Rome throws in some experimental post-punk/post-metal stuff in there to counter all the hardcore influences. We're talking atmospheric soundscapes, slowly progressing clean guitars that eventually reach an exposive climax, which more than often just leads into more Gallowsy hardcore punk tremor. See "Apathy" for a perfect example of the latter, and "Debauchery" for a great example of how to sound note-by-note like Gallows.

The problem is, Burn Down Rome are lacking on both fronts. They aren't quite as in-your-face aggressive as Gallows on their hardcore punk songs, nor are they as experimentalist and out-reachig as a band like Envy or Mouth Of The Architect on the spacey songs. That being said, "Devotion" overall isn't particularly bad for a debut album, it just suffers from sound waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much like Gallows for me to not pop on "Orchestra Of Wolves" instead.

6

Download: Debauchery, Apathy
For the fans of: Gallows, Young Hollywood, The Ghost Of A Thousand
Listen: Myspace

Release date 15.09.2008
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