Burden Of A Day

OneOneThousand

Written by: BL on 07/07/2009 21:18:09

Time to spin around the Rise Records roundabout for another band today, and we have ourselves the Oregon, US hailing Burden Of A Day. Formed now five years ago, their last outing was the much fan-acclaimed 2008 release "Blessed Be Our Ever After" - which was a Christian post-hardcore/metalcore album of moderate quality and certainly warranted me to check out their follow up, "OneOneThousand". One major lineup change in the form of new vocalist Kyle Tamosaitis since the last record has some fans in a spot of worry as to whether he could keep the band on track.

Suffice to say as the infectious opener "Remember" hits, you can be sure of the fact that Kyle certainly has one hell of a set of windpipes. His clean voice is clear, soothing, somewhat high pitched (nowhere near like A Skylit Drive though), but strong at the same time. His screams are also just as adept, able to sound powerful and deep when the music calls for it while able to vary his range to include some more pitched screams. As common as it seems, the songs seems perfectly crafted around his voice - the clean choruses are wrapped by uplifting and bright soundscapes (The epic post-middle section of "The Shame In Shedding Wool" exemplifies this) while the heavier stuff is layered on top of caustic and aggressive barrages of punchy guitar work courtesy of Josh and Mike Sommers. Speaking of which, the last album was produced courtesy of our favourite producer/mixmaster/scene-hero Joey Sturgis (The Devil Wears Prada, Oceano, Attack Attack! and more), and this one isn't - the end result is wildly different: everything sounds more raw and in the end, more believable (vocals probably still got tuned a bit as they do these days).

Some of the songs unfortunately have the tendency to slightly dip in quality (not by too much), costing points in the department for how memorable they can be. Filler moments start to creep into parts of songs and it's a real shame because the thumbs up material on this album is great: the choruses are catchy and easy to sing along to while there are some really cool hard hitting parts for the fans of the heavier element in their sound. The songs also flow well for the most part and at the end of the day the experience is more enjoyable than not. There are even less cookie cutter breakdowns (they're still there, but a lot more varied) than before.

A lot of fans seem to harbour a sour taste towards the new vocalist, since his drastically different voice perhaps is not what they're used to. But I for one think that he has solidified the lineup with his excellent singing and choruses. That's what I'll remember, this is a step up from the last album and in a way now separates this band slightly from the generic crowd of the Rise roster. Not a perfect album by any means, but a solid addition to your playlist if you enjoy post-hardcore with a small amount of metalcore thrown in.

7

Download: Remember, Fool Me Once, My Forfeit
For the fans of: Here I Come Falling, A Skylit Drive, Blessthefall
Listen: Myspace

Release date 12.05.2009
Rise Records

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