Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Burning Borders - Burning up you radio


Okay, so we all know that our radios have recently been flooded by typical radio friendly pop rock bands lately. Bands that I have to give props to for realizing that music is a supply and demand business, where fans create the demand and bands produce the supply. Well, Burning Borders is supplying a great hard rock radio friendly sound with a surprising original twist. Bringing the percussion to the forefront of their music and letting the guitars take on the role of background melodies, they have created a heavier sound that you not only hear but feel. Their music is the type that you can't listen to sitting still, Levi Catroppa pumps out beats that force your body to move.

So we start off with "Sleep" a song that I feel would be the perfect first single for these guys. With the amazing vocal talents of Brian Reed pushing through the music, and lyrics that I can imagine every pre-teen rocker singing along to. This song is a perfect example of feeling the music. With well written melodies, and a heavy guitar intro which carries into the chorus, I can see this song blowing up the charts easily.

Levi starts off "Again" with a simple intro, and keeps his percussion the focus throughout the rest of this song. Unfortunately, that's really the only thing I liked about this song. It's your typical emo-friendly single, with sappy lyrics, simple guitar rifts, and basically just an overall feeling of unoriginality. There is a nice guitar solo break about 2.5 minutes into the song, but it only lasts a few seconds until going back into sad slow rhythm of this teen angst ballad.

"So Divine" takes a minute or so to get going, honestly when it first came on I completely lost interest, but then the chorus takes over. With quick tonged lyrics, hard hitting drum beats and the perfect accompaniment of subtle hard rock guitar melodies, my attention is aggressively man handled back to focus and held for the rest of the song. This song shows excellent timing, I just wish that it had started out as well as it finished.

Okay, so I love the intro for "Bottom of a bottle". This is a song that grabs your attention from the first note and holds on tight. After the last song I was getting a little worried. In this song the guitars actually become noticeable, and you realize that there is some major talent coming from the string department. I love the vocals for this song, Brian Reed stretches his voice and does an amazing job of showcasing his immense vocal talent. I definitely appreciate a singer who isn't simply a carbon copy of Eddie Vedder.

The Burning Borders pattern is slightly broken for "Enemy". With guitar players Justin and Mike taking their place on centre stage and bringing the harmonies and old school guitar rifts to the forefront, while Levi takes the usual drummers spot in the background. Although he does come back out front for the chorus, which also holds a great vocal harmony. Plus we finally have a guitar solo! And it was excellent display of shredding prowess. I also quite enjoyed Korn style vocals at the end of the song.

Alright, lastly we have "Lose Control". This song starts out with a metal feel but unfortunately instead of losing control, I lost interest after the first falsetto note. I found the song to be very basic and kind of rock by numbers. There a few short displays of quick fingered talent coming from the guitar line, but that's about the only thing that keeps this song from being a total flop. I did appreciate the punk style vocals rounding out the end of this song.

So, here's my final opinion. Go out and see these guys live, buy their albums, and get autographs because they are going to blow up on the music scene sooner than later. With an amazing rhythm section stealing centre stage, talented guitar players pumping out hard rock harmonies, and the intense vocal abilities of lead singer Brian Reed, these guys are classic hard pop rock, and todays music fans can't seem to get enough of that. Just don't confuse Burning Borders with your average radio friendly rock band, because they can actually produce well written songs, unlike the fluff I keep hearing DJ's like Todd Hancock raving about. These guys are an amazing local talent, check em out at http://www.myspace.com/burningbordersmusic

1 comment:

  1. Hey, Brian Reed here from Burning Borders.
    I just wanted to say thank you for the great review and I hope to see you out at a show sometime soon!

    Were playing the Bourbon Jan. 22

    ReplyDelete