Anger Burning
For those of you who haven’t heard of Burning Flag, they are a band that has a rather unique groove to their hardcore punk/d-beat or whatever you want to label it as.
A menacing piano intro starts things off, blending into the track proper of ‘Face The Truth’, which you’d be forgiven in thinking that it might have been an unreleased track from their first album.
The giveaway here that it’s not, is the sheer presence of MD and Jonesy as they punch out the chorus. The crunchy, catchy d-beat of ‘Still A Lie’ takes over and cranks up the noise, with MD screaming her lungs out, solo style on this one.
‘This Town’ has a beat that catches you off guard and is by no means a simple tune. Almost metallic in nature, its feet in still firmly in the punk camp, lamenting the decay of urban life.
‘Scarred Earth’ begins with a snippet that gives a brutal warning of chemical misuse, before it kicks off with a building-up of the verse as it’s delivered in a different style to most other Burning Flag songs and is not the only track that does this – it’s part of the experimentational evolution that was mentioned previously. The staccato punctuation of the verse is particularly pleasing to the ear, indeed.
Next up, we have ‘Carly’, which again has a differing vocal style and delivery and makes the song very catchy and it’d be unusual for those witnessing the song live not to be nodding their heads along to it. It’s upbeat song that deals with abuse in the most unusual way. Absolute class!
‘Strong’ follows and it’s another winner, again metallic in nature but never really losing focus on the genre it truly belongs to.’Cold Blood’ has Jonesy taking over the front vocals with MD staying as backing vocalist and is another example of how the band have progressed and is a most welcome opus in this collection offered to us.
A soundbite from that monumental fuckwit Trump starts up the penultimate track and it’s a relentless stomping number that is ‘Gun Law’, punctuated by harmonic squeals from the guitar that make you sit up take note. This leaves the last track – the title track, which clocks in as the longest on the album, partly down to the ending soundbite that underlines, in bold and capital letters that racism is never to be tolerated EVER.
This is an essential purchase – head over to their Bandcamp page or however you want to get in contact with them and order this immediately. You will not disappointed!