AUGUST BURNS RED: Guardians (METALCORE): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

If there's one thing you can't blame August Burns Red for, it's his consistency. With seventeen years of existence and several Grammy Award nominations, the band is a veteran of melodic metalcore. Across the Atlantic, the quintet's reputation has never wavered, and the Americans' previous effort, "Phantom Anthem", released in 2017, was once again a great success, reaching the top of the charts immediately after its release. It is thus sure of its achievements and in a position of strength on a metalcore scene with an unfortunate tendency to go in circles that August Burns Red comes out with a ninth album, "Guardians", whose title alone can lead one to believe that the band is the guardian of a style that it has largely contributed to popularize.

From this point of view, the mission is largely fulfilled. August Burns Red concentrates on the fundamentals: death metal riffs, numerous rhythmic breaks and melodic guitar lines on which a guttural, often unison vocals are laid down, which are full of redemptive lyrics in the purest tradition of Christian rock, which the band claims to be ('The Narrative', 'Bones', 'Paramount', 'Defender', 'Dismembered Memory').

So there's nothing new in August Burns Red's music, whose coherence too often borders on redundancy. The problem is there. And the impression of always listening to the same song with the same composition tics is soon felt. The band tries to some atmospheric breaks on some tracks ('Lighthouse', 'Extinct By Instinct'), nothing helps and boredom quickly takes over, during fifty minutes of a recipe so calibrated that it rarely avoids formatting.

The light at the end of this long monotonous musical tunnel only comes at the very end of "Guardians" with the excellent 'Three Fountains' which, with its long introduction in clear sound and its progressive construction, brings a little originality to an album that is totally devoid of it. All the more so as it is also handicapped by a production rarely showing off its power, too often drowning the bass under the flood of guitars ('Bloodletter').

Even if, with "Guardians", August Burns Red's ambition is not to renew himself, a small effort of composition and originality would not have harmed his reputation. By repeating itself too much, the band doesn't serve its cause, nor that of metalcore, a musical style that's starting to run out of steam. - Official website

AUGUST BURNS RED

GUARDIANS

AUTRE LABEL

METALCORE