Once again we board the music discovery bus and make the trip to the great white north, the land of maple syrup, hockey, some amazing bands and of course a healthy sprinkling of the word “eh”. That’s right kiddies, we are in Canada once again. We may need to make a permanent section of this site dedicated solely to the bands that this country keeps cranking out.

Generally speaking, when we get a new album in the mail we follow these steps. 1. Stop acting like a schoolgirl, 2. Press Play, 3. Repeat album, 4. Write. This review started out the same way as all the rest of them do, unfortunately for me, I missed a small warning sticker at the bottom of this one. If I would have seen it prior to pushing the play button I could have at least prepared myself for what was to come. Talk about being blindsided, this album came out of nowhere and did just as the warning label that I unfortunately ignored said it would. Once I had recovered from this incident I decided the best thing I could do was to put pen to paper and let the words flow.

We listen to a ridiculous amount of music here and I think its safe to say that very few albums float to the top and require the amount of listening that this album did. I have literally played this album about 27 times and still cannot pick out any flaws in it. For a sophomore album Burning Borders really knew what the hell they were doing, this album is flawless.

“Beautiful” is the first song that really sticks out for me. The instruments on this particular track are very tight and precise, each one adding something valuable to each and every second that this masterpiece has to offer. Brian’s vocals have the tendency to draw you in and not let you go until you realize the album has played all the way through. The chorus itself is very catchy and I found myself singing it out loud as I was going about my day to day activities.

Just when you get sucked into Brian’s pitch-perfect radio-friendly vocals they decide to throw in something a little different. That something is the next amazing song on this album entitled “Cold“. The song starts out with a sweet guitar riff and then goes straight into Brian’s ultra catchy vocals and then they start to mix in a few screamo elements that make this song a true standout among this record. There is no doubt in my mind that this man’s voice is very versatile and should allow them to continue making amazing music for hopefully a very long time.

“Follow” starts out with yet another sweet guitar riff and is followed directly by more catchy and memorable lyrics and a couple trademark screams. All in all this is yet another great song that shows how versatile these guys are.

This album finishes off with “Picture Perfect” which is definitely a radio ready rock song that should be dominating any top 20 out there. This song has all of the required components in it to pull in new listeners and keep them for a long time. Great guitars and drums, tight vocals, just the perfect amount of screaming and a very catchy chorus.

I am seriously impressed with this album, I don’t generally expect any album to completely blow me away like this one did. There is no doubt in my mind that these guys will be huge someday. As a review this was very difficult to write, I had a very hard time just picking 4 songs out to talk about. I probably could have written a paragraph about each and every song on this album and still not have painted you the best picture I could possibly have done. This album is flat out amazing, you NEED to buy this cd when it is released on September 1st, it is also on the fast track to landing a spot on my personal top 20 albums. Amazing work guys, this album is phenomenal.

I would like to thank Disa at Higher Ground Productions for getting us a pre-release copy of this album.

Burning Borders is:

Brian Reed, Vocals
Justin Griffiths, Guitars
Mike Guercio, Guitars
Kevin Catroppa, Bass
Levi Catroppa, Drums

Management: Disa Cameron, Higher Ground Productions
Recorded at: Ear Art Music Studios in Delta
Engineered and Produced by: Tim Neuhaus (who also produced and engineered the boys first album, “Truth and Logic”)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mike is just a normal guy. A normal guy that thought finding new music was a challenge. My friends and I built this so that we could find the best unknown bands out there and bring them front and center for your listening enjoyment.

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