REZN Burden – Vinyl LP (mint bone black merge)

Pressing info : First press on mint bone black merge “serpentine edition” vinyl LP.

Since their inception, REZN have mined the stark monochromatic depths of underground metal and fused them with the kaleidoscopic delights of psychedelia, prog rock, and shoegaze. With their latest album ‘Burden’, they plumb the deepest, bleakest trenches of their sound while retaining a lifeline into the cosmos. Staking a claim at the crossroads of the hazy dimensions of modern psych acts like Black Angels, the cavernous gloom and reverb-drenched guitar of bands like Spectral Voice, and the lurching low-end meditations of artists like OM, REZN have created ‘Burden’—an album of immense amp-worshipping weight and intoxicating instrumentation.

‘Burden’ was recorded simultaneously with their previous album ‘Solace’ back in July 2021 at Earth Analog Studios in Tolono, IL by Matt Russell. Rather than release a double album, REZN divided the material into two separate records, each with its own distinct emotional timbre. Whereas ‘Solace’ was meant to uplift and create a sense of narcotic dreaminess, ‘Burden’ skews towards the themes of delirium, claustrophobia, and misery. Musically, ‘Burden’ favors riffs over atmosphere, percussion over ether, dissonance over beauty, but there is still an undeniable cohesion between it and its predecessor. The marriage of brute force and sublime textures has always been a key tactic in REZN’s approach—a duality that may explain their touring history with fellow synesthesia-inducing metallurgists Elder and Russian Circles—but the spectrum of the band’s mercurial temperaments has never felt as clearly defined and fully explored as it does on ‘Burden.’

Burden’s artwork is a literal continuation of Solace’s landscape painting, showing the fiery depths at the foot of the mountain range. Even Burden’s most reserved moments feel like the calm before the storm, a gathering of momentum before the punishing closer and lead single “Chasm,” a megalithic weedian crusher further bolstered by a scorching guitar solo courtesy of Russian Circles’ Mike Sullivan.

Tracklist:
01. Indigo
02. Instinct
03. Descent of Sinuous Corridors
04. Bleak Patterns
05. Collapse
06. Soft Prey
07. Chasm

REZN related