Some twenty years ago, I reviewed a great little disc from a band called Black Dahlia. Well, like many musical acts that come and go, they went. Sad, but it happens all the time; modern music being what it is, sometimes it\u2019s survival of the fittest.<\/p>\n
Fast forward 20 years. Guitarist Joel Emory, formerly of Black Dahlia, (who, full disclosure, is a former cousin-in-law of mine) went into the studio for the first time in a long time in his incarnation as burn.star. Kama phobos<\/i> is his (their?) first album, and it will burn off your wallpaper and scare your cat. This is a good thing, in case you wondered.<\/p>\n
You can\u2019t pin a genre on burn.star. At various times, they hit shoegaze, trance, electronica, dark heavy metal, distorted hip-hop (which reminds me of MC 500 Ft Jesus), new wave, angry Rage Against The Machine-type stylings, and heavily distorted ambient. It\u2019s a challenge to keep up with Emory\u2019s mental and musical processes, but it\u2019s worth it. He played everything on this CD, and proved himself a highly talented multi-instrumentalist.<\/p>\n
The album kicks off with the portentous \u201cThe Quandary,\u201d which at times sounds like Bauhaus on even more acid, a psychedelic journey in strange places. \u201cThey Wandered (In The Shadows)\u201d and \u201cSundowners\u201d are nicely crunchy romps through dark metal. \u201cExpanses Within,\u201d \u201cAmerican Overlords,\u201d \u201cGod I Wish You Loved Me\u201d\u2014I could go track by track on this one, but instead I want you to experience it yourself.<\/p>\n
If there\u2019s a misstep on kama phobos<\/i>, it\u2019s \u201cComin\u2019 Your Way.\u201d I just couldn\u2019t get into it; it was like reading James Joyce in that I scrambled for some sort of hook to understand. That might be about me.<\/p>\n
In the end, kama phobos<\/i> is a challenging, well-crafted, multifaceted voyage through multiple musical stylings. If your tastes run to the shadows when it comes to your tunes, definitely check it out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":34901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10899],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-46768","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-burn-star","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46768"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}