This is the second album by UK extreme metal band Burner.
Burner bring us 48 minutes of material to abandon all hope to on No One Is Coming to Save Us. Playing a hybrid style that’s as effective as it is unexpectedly multifaceted, Burner’s new record is a real powerhouse.
No One Is Coming to Save Us manifests as a record with many moving parts. These have all been sewn up into an abused, traumatised, mutilated corpse that’s been reborn as a lethally efficient killing machine. Alongside this, there is an air about No One Is Coming to Save Us that’s apocalyptic and mournful. It feels like it is documenting the end times – it’s not happy about it, but it also knows it’s too late to do anything about it either, so it’s resigned itself to hastening the end as violently as it can. More prosaically, it’s a mix of death metal, hardcore, and sludge, with even a touch of black metal surfacing in places. Burner are very adept at their grim work.
The moods are dark and unforgiving. Featuring guests from the singers of Cult Leader, Sylosis, and Trivium, No One Is Coming to Save Us is harsh and brutal, yet nuanced with it. Burner take advantage of emotive layers, atmospheric depth, harrowing melodies, and dynamic darkness to enrich their core hostility. The music benefits from extensive worldbuilding, marrying aggressive sludge-adjacent abrasiveness to expressive extreme metal. The songs are well-written, with a gravitas that asserts itself early on. Over time and multiple spins this firmly establishes itself; No One Is Coming to Save Us has a personality that’s well-developed.
From epic atmosphere to scathing blasts, from cutting riffs to venomous screams and roars, from expansive midnight vistas to scenes of utter devastation, from emotive soundscapes to steamroller intensity, and more besides, Burner deliver a well-rounded, comprehensive slab of heaviness. This is a band who have hacked out their own path through the extreme metal landscape, and it simply begs to be followed. Burner have a way with murderous distortion, and No One Is Coming to Save Us is an extremely strong record.
Essential listening.
