It may already be released, but this one came to me so close to the release date that I had no chance to get my ears around it until it was already causing terror on streaming services. Such is the intensity of No One Is Coming To Save Us, the second album by London Death Metal / Hardcore monsters Burner, that it is essential listening for those who attend Damnation, Arctangent and the likes.
Burner – No One Is Coming To Save Us
Release Date: Out Now
Words: Paul Hutchings
Following on from 2023’s It All Returns To Nothing, this is an album that simply grabs you by the throat and slams you against the wall. I swear my internal organs were shifting even though I was sat down as I listened.
First play through is intense. It is like sticking your head in a Rolls-Royce engine on a 747. Sonic abuse at its finest, with multiple occasions to draw breath through dark and melancholic passages that soon erupt into brutal breakdowns, savage riffage and all-out violent power.
Behind it all, blending into cinematic soundscapes, lies a band with a desire to create music that is both captivating and punishing. The opening blast comes with a gentler start. At over seven minutes, The Third Revelation contrasts with the thick, riff-heavy power of Accelerationist, which bursts eardrums and is over in under two minutes. Both contain coiled springs of frustration, anger and social commentary.
Special guests add spice. Sylosis main man Josh Middleton lends his voice on What Will You Give? Trivium’s Matthew K. Heafy puts some heft into Sunrise, Parabellum, whilst Cult Leader’s Anthony Lucero provides some massive visceral vocals on Kurtz.
All three songs swing in different ways, highlighting the incredible ability of Burner to switch their style via a web of intricate textures and genres. It is bruising Death Metal flipping to Deathcore, Hardcore and even Black Metal at times. The appeal is wide, regardless of the niche intensity that the band spew forth.
It is an introspective piece that works. Punishing slabs of crushing intensity are mirrored with reflections on the current carnage being carved through the globe. Singer Harry Nott explains. “If It All Returns to Nothing looked outwards to the world’s chaos throughout history, No One Is Coming to Save Us instead looks inwards at its proposed cause; humanity’s violent, animalistic nature, begging us for change.
“This is an album about human behaviour: that people create endless cycles of violence by repeating the mistakes of the past, forging a brutal history that we fail to learn from.”
Underneath there is also the struggle for hope and courage to address our own problems. It may be a harrowing listen, check out the suffocation on My Hands Become Weapons and you will feel it, but this is an album that does at least provide some opportunity for a future view that offers something.
It may be aural abuse, but it is worth every minute.
No One Is Coming To Save Us is out now via Church Road Records. For more details, visit bfan.link/no-one-is-coming-to-save-us.
