Barn Burner – Bangers II: Scum Of The Earth (Metal Blade)
As anybody who has had the misfortune of sitting through their albums can attest, joke bands are almost never funny. This can be attributed to different causes. All those inside jokes that the band members developed while spending far too much time in each other’s company usually fail to catch with a larger audience; quirkiness is never a virtue when it comes to music; even the best humor gets old when reiterated a few times. Montreal’s Barn Burner have never been a joke band, though a casual observer could be forgiven for making the mistaken assumption that they are. Between the cartoonish album covers and song titles like “Beer Today, Bong Tomorrow” or “Brohemoth,” the band really doesn’t make a strong case for themselves as a serious band. But they are, both a (relatively) serious band and a goddamn good one at that, and it seems that with their follow-up to 2009’s Bangers, they’ve at least taken a few small steps away from the party-metal vibe of their debut.
Barn Burner – Bangers II: Scum Of The Earth (Metal Blade)
As anybody who has had the misfortune of sitting through their albums can attest, joke bands are almost never funny. This can be attributed to different causes. All those inside jokes that the band members developed while spending far too much time in each other’s company usually fail to catch with a larger audience; quirkiness is never a virtue when it comes to music; even the best humor gets old when reiterated a few times. Montreal’s Barn Burner have never been a joke band, though a casual observer could be forgiven for making the mistaken assumption that they are. Between the cartoonish album covers and song titles like “Beer Today, Bong Tomorrow” or “Brohemoth,” the band really doesn’t make a strong case for themselves as a serious band. But they are, both a (relatively) serious band and a goddamn good one at that, and it seems that with their follow-up to 2009’s Bangers, they’ve at least taken a few small steps away from the party-metal vibe of their debut.
The most noticeable change is the production. Whereas the band’s first album had a slightly quieter, less dynamic recording (albeit one that helped the band sound more like some long-lost late-70s band), Bangers II has a far heavier more visceral approach that helps keep Barn Burner from seeming too akin to the hordes of retro-obsessed metal bands that have been popping up in recent years. The songs themselves reflect this as well: whereas the older material existed somewhere between Thin Lizzy and Paul D’Anno-era Iron Maiden, the band’s more recent songs are leaner, faster, and darker. They now seem more closely aligned with the earliest thrash metal records, the ones that existed before the genre had solidified into a single sound and was characterized more by a hybrid of New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, hardcore punk, and Motorhead – each borrowed from liberally without the sort of rigid standardization for which the genre became known.
Barn Burner is strong beyond their ability to capture a place in time as well. They have a way with a melody that few metal bands do – not in an operatic power metal or an At The Gates-knockoff sense, but with simple, honest-to-Satan hoarse voice hooks. Their individual song components are all great, but it’s really the melodic sense that fastens the whole thing together. Much of this can be chalked up to the experiences of regular touring – not just that the band seems like a cohesive unit but that they’re willing to branch out from the single-mindedness of their earliest output. Whereas the initial volume of Bangers was a solid, if somewhat unvarying, effort, its sequel shows Barn Burner taking several aesthetic detours without watering down the content or seeming too eager to redefine their approach. The coda of “Gate Creeper” is an excellent example – the music falls away to an eerie organ line overlaid with howled vocals for a brief interlude that has no parallel anywhere in the band’s sound. The album’s closer “Ghost Blues” strays a little too close to Danzig’s bluesier forays, but is, at the very least, a noble attempt to try something slightly different.
And it’s not like Bangers II is a dour album by any means (having songs with titles like “Keg Stand And Deliver” undermines that), but it’s a step closer to the darkness and the intensity of Barn Burner’s influences. Though their music was never solely reliant on beer-bong humor, the fact that it was present at all may have turned off potential listeners thinking the band would be another in a long, and generally terrible, line of party-thrash bands. Hopefully, Bangers II can go a long way towards dispelling that idea and helping to establish Barn Burner’s reputation as a band who hasn’t produced a bad album yet.
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Barn Burner performs at Strange Matter on August 3rd with Ramming Speed, Gnawed, Humungus, and (A) Truth.
