ALBUM REVIEW: Setting Fire To The Sky – Urne
Two exceptional albums into their career and a list of supporters that reads like a who’s who of modern metal royalty. It is baffling that URNE have still not yet found that gateway into the wider metal consciousness. Having enthralled the underground scene with their complexity and ambition, delivering time and again a freshness and bite in a movement often dominated by stagnating current trend. Album number three seeks to harness all the high-level energy that URNE create and focus it into a glorious scream, finally announcing to the wider masses the arrival of this thunderous trio.
Following a subtle acoustic introduction, akin to Battery on Master Of Puppets, opening track, Be Not Dismayed morphs into a pile driver with a relentless pace. It announces the arrival of the new album by kicking in the door and offering no quarter. However, it is expertly crafted and wildly exciting. The huge chorus section offering an elevation to skull crushing power. The groove is laid bare and is utterly captivating. Despite it’s heavy and harsh appearance, it’s impossible to not be swept up in the rhythm and melody.
One of the core strengths of URNE is their ability to weave an irresistible groove throughout a whole album. As the record moves effortlessly between belligerent banger to storming anthem, the band hold a grasping attention with every note. They can offer up riotous riffs and rhythms, crashing in at thunderous pace yet deftly move into a subtlety that keeps the music invigorating. Weeping To The World offers up a taste of just how good they are as songwriters. Weighing in with unstrained force at one moment before morphing into captivating melodic leads the next. All the while sounding like a dyed in the wool heavy metal anthem. Time and again on tracks such as The Spirit, Alive, the title track or The Ancient Horizon, URNE showcase a harnessed talent for how heavy metal should be delivered, with intensity, passion and a meticulous precision so that no one element overpowers another. Servants of the song and the sound, this album showcases in grander light what many in the underground have known for a long time, URNE are the banner bearers for modern UK metal.
Like the end credits following the most exhilarating action film. Breathe draws a peaceful veil over the closing of the album. It’s a balm after the nonstop riff driven preceding. Gorgeously layered textures and accompaniment from virtuoso cellist JO QUAIL enables the quietest track to speak loudest and serve up a sublime, memorable ending to what is undoubtedly an exceptional album.
Raucous, anthemic and utterly captivating. URNE have created the perfect album for showcasing exactly why they are considered one of the most exciting acts around today. With a subtle tip of the hat to foundational artists, yet feet in the present and a gaze set to the future they encapsulate the visceral energy of heavy metal. A band who are yet to play a note wrong in their ascension, it is high time they receive the wider recognition they deserve. Setting Fire to The Sky is likely to be the album that sees them defiantly take centre stage.
Rating: 10/10
Setting Fire To The Sky is set for release on January 30th via Spinefarm Records.
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