ALBUM REVIEW: Burnout Codes – Heave Blood & Die
Burnout might be what the world is suffering from right now, but Norwegian polymaths HEAVE BLOOD & DIE have burnt their candle at both ends, over-caffeinated their bloodstreams, and kicked it into overdrive on Burnout Codes. Like space pirates scavenging parts across scattered colonies, the band have stripped their sound of unwanted cargo, piecing back together a streamlined ship. Soaked in atmosphere, and more accessible than ever, they’ve done away with abyssal howls and kaleidoscopic psychedelia, opting for a post-metal post-punk fusion that sweats out like a fever.
Opener Dog Days deals in deliciously distorted fuzz; it’s the sound of setting yourself on fire to find out who you are. Its parasitic choruses carve their way into your cranium, so you’re forever humming “Heatwaves, dog days, dog days / Crossfire, red eyes / All night in the wrong street / All night, all night in the wrong street”. Much like on 2021’s Post People opener Radio Silence, the band come in all guns blazing.
As if Radio Silence (and Post People as a whole) were the seed to Burnout Codes’ tree, synthist and vocalist Marie Sofie Mikkelsen’s growing influence on HEAVE BLOOD & DIE has become just as apparent as their music has become accessible – whether it’s the glitching bursts of synthetic colour splashing their monochromatic soundscapes on Things That Hurt, or the constant hum of traffic flowing through the dual-vocal dynamism that elevates Stress City into a heart-rate-inducing shot of adrenaline.
As with every band who ages up, growing pains are bound to come, and Burnout Codes is no exception. Mjelle might be a double crescent of magical sandy beaches, but for HEAVE BLOOD & DIE, it’s a five-minute slog of twitchy synths and lo-fi vocals, a track that tries to be as sharp as a knife, but is as blunt as a hammer. Elsewhere, HEATWAVE 3000 buries its crusade against climate change under a smorgasbord of noise, like a burrowing aardvark, so much so that the pivotal point is silenced rather than simply lost.
However, for every song that doesn’t sit so well, they’re usually sandwiched between those that do. The likes of Men Like You and Hits are cinematic adventures, the latter’s frenetic fuzz building like a conveyor belt delivering you to your death by buzzsaw; lo-fi gang vocals swim through swamps as the music breathes life into a vast cosmic universe constantly expanding and contracting throughout time, its sparse vocals acting as the life and death of worlds.
As you press play on Hits, this is the point you ponder Burnout Codes’ agenda and begin to appreciate HEAVE BLOOD & DIE’s ability to create earworms for existentialists. As Karl Løftingsmo Pedersen sings “There she goes, all alone, in the void, all is wrong / Just one hit, it’s just one hit, it went south, in your world / It’s destroyed, she’s withdrawn, just one hit, it’s just one hit”, you comprehend this isn’t the tale of a dying planet, but a metaphor for the destruction of self at the hands of addiction, drugs and mental health – the ailments of modern society.
Despite its musical DNA being hardwired to have you dancing throughout, Burnout Codes is by no means an easy listen. It drags its heels through polluted cities piled up with stretched-thin stress-heads consumed by the complexities of modern living. Closer Seen It All’s atmospheric drums, hauntingly jangly riffs, and broodily foreboding lyrics — “Now I’ve seen it all through the eyes of a mother, human being / And it hurts, everything burns, everything burns, everything burns” — are harrowing enough until you discover the album is dedicated to bassist Eivind André Imingen, who decided to end his life following the recordings of the album, in which it takes on an even darker, and rawer, reading.
Burnout Codes is a living, breathing document of a band finally beginning to become themselves. If they continue to build this ship in Mikkelsen and Pedersen’s vision, by the time their next album comes to town, HEAVE BLOOD & DIE will be undisputed leaders of experimental post-punk. And until then, Burnout Codes brings all the existential earworms you need.
Rating: 8/10
Burnout Codes is set for release on January 26th via Fysisk Format.
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