ALBUM REVIEW: Burden – REZN
The metropolis of Chicago, known as the Windy City, sits along the shoreline of Lake Michigan and is one of the most populous cities in the Midwest. Home to a wealth of culture and music alongside culturally significant places and sports franchises, Chicago is an inspiring place for musicians. It is also home to the quartet of Rob McWilliams (vocals, guitar), Phil Cangelosi (bass), Patrick Dunn (drums) and Spencer Ouellette (synth/saxophone) that make up the ethereal and enigmatic unit known at REZN. The band return to follow up their stunning 2023 album Solace with their fifth full-length Burden. It stands in stark contrast to its predecessor, heavier and grittier but still containing the ethereal melancholy and kaleidoscopic delights of psychedelia, prog rock and shoegaze that REZN specialise in.
Burden was recorded at the same time as Solace in July 2021, but instead of releasing a double album, REZN decided to split them into two separate releases. Solace and Burden are two sides of the same coin, each with their own unique emotional timbres. While both albums are entwined in REZN’s signature atmospherics and progressive psychedelia, Solace was fundamentally designed to uplift and create a sense of serenity and dreaminess, whereas Burden veers in the opposite direction, towards misery, delirium and paranoid claustrophobia. As a result of this emotional shift, Burden’s songwriting favours riffs and pummelling percussion over delicate melodies and ethereal atmospherics. It is intense and gritty, with a strong sense of foreboding and dizzying dread.
Even Burden’s artwork is a continuation of Solace as it shows the fiery pools of lava at the foot of the mountain range. There is an undeniable synergy between the two albums so it feels impossible to talk about one without the other. However, Burden is unique in its own right. It is arranged in a way that all leads to the album’s final track Chasm; even the quiet and reflective moments throughout the album feel like an uneasy calm that comes before a frantic storm. It also captures the band’s mercurial songwriting more vividly than ever before. It channels the final phase of an existential descent and the closer you get to the album’s concluding track the more intense and emotionally heavy the songs feel.
Burden is a dizzying album, just as you think you’ve found a way out it drags you back in and crushes you with its heavy emotional weight. It’s akin to a panic attack, hope fades as you see the light at the end of the corridor but you get no closer to it the further you walk down this dark passage. It is interesting that both Solace and Burden were written at the same time due to their polar opposite moods and sounds. If you were to listen to them one after the other you’d hear the extraordinary musical journey that the band have been on and the sheer emotional depths that they have plunged to in order to create two stand-out records.
The album opens up with Indigo which picks up where Webbed Roots left off, a gigantic and atmospheric soundscape of luscious vocal melodies intertwined with guitar leads soaked in reverb and chorus. This is followed by the ominous Instinct, which follows a similar formula but you just begin to feel the darkness of this album rise with McWilliams signing about being “on the edge“. The interlude track Descent Of Sinuous Corridors is where the album’s mood flips and that intense darkness that comes with a descent into delirium really begins to come to the fore.
As that interlude bleeds into Bleak Patterns you start to get this chilling feeling of despair, as if reality is slipping away. REZN begin to bring in the fuzz-laden doomy riffs yet still remain somewhat atmospheric on Bleak Patterns, alongside some subtle discordant chords that make your muscles twitch as the slow chord progressions progress. Collapse moves away from atmospherics and plunges you straight into the fray with heavy, sludgy riffs intertwined with dark guitar leads and disembodied vocals. It begins the build up to the album’s finale. While Soft Prey is an eerie track that lets Ouellette loose on his saxophone, you get the sense of the final moment of calm before a full meltdown of sanity. Chasm is a stark, visceral and chromatic track that plunges you in to the dark core of the album as well as featuring a blistering guitar solo from RUSSIAN CIRCLES’ Mike Sullivan.
REZN have shown us their darker side on this album. Packed full of visceral riffs and haunting melodies, Burden is a dark and brooding album that makes you feel the weight of a descent into delirium and chills you to the bone as a result.
Rating: 9/10
Burden is set for release on June 14th via Sargent House.
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