It might say something for my enthusiasm for this record that it has sat for almost a year in my 'to review' pile since first receiving it. While I do attempt to avoid at least complete bias in my reviews, in the case of Florida's Burden of a Day, I knew exactly what I was going to hear when I finally put this CD in my player.
Whether it was the artwork featuring skulls and human body schematics with muscles labeled in their Latin names; the one sheet describing them as "heartfelt and melodic"; song titles like "For Tomorrow We Die" and "Ashes To Ashes", or simply the 'grungy' font used all over the insert, something told me that this band was going to play a brand of emocore with those melodic guitars and 'dark' lyrics we all know and love. Like Nostradamus, my predictions were true.
Pilots & Paper Planes is the band's debut release, and as you might imagine, it begins with dual vocals (screamed and sung), twin guitar riffing and double bass-led breakdowns. Lyrics are standard fare, with "High Noon" bizarrely sampling lyrics from Christian staple "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," which makes more sense when the band's Myspace reveals their Christian agenda. Christian or not, though, this doesn't explain the even more bizarre "Cowboys never die!" ending to this song. Aside from this, the band's lyrics are melodic hardcore/"emo" genericXcore, "We'll run until we die / Body bleeding / bruised and beaten / Still we cry / We'll run until we die."
As you might expect, production on the record is solid, with that crunchy guitar tone and rolling bass drum tone. Vocals have that Warped Tour sheen to them, and the only time we get a hint of amateurness is during "No Blood No Foul," where one of the call-and-response vocalists suffers from an embarrassing voice cracking problem. Doubtless this was intentional by the band, aiming to reflect a Saetia-like emotional catharsis in the rousing yell of "I'll never be able to sleep again" (which you just know is going to be followed by a string section and acoustic guitar lull), but instead it just sounds pre-pubescent and silly. Likewise, the triplet rhythms and breakdown riffs all tend to blend together in a mess of hardcore clichés.
This kind of music is hard to critique. It's not going to appeal to any older hardcore fans that grew up on Gorilla Biscuits, Minor Threat, Descendents and Lifetime, and newer hardcore fans of acts like Converge or Modern Life Is War are going to hate this stuff even more. There is an audience for this though, and I'd imagine it mostly comprises of young teens who are just discovering aggressive music. If Burden of a Day are able to turn kids onto some of their more original peers, then all is well, but otherwise, it's hard to see what they're bringing to a table that is already overcrowded by tons of xeroxed bands playing this exact same thing.
At times, Burden of a Day sound just like Silverstein, who aren't listed on their influences but seem to have a very similar aesthetic. The bands they are listing as influences include Refused and Thursday but I don't hear many links to those bands. If this is the shape of punk to come, I want no part of it.
See also
Silverstein, Thrice, Warped Tour, Nu-Emo
