Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Intense, 1 Jul 2008
The Violet Burning's third album was their first on a mainstream indie label, and is a million miles from the Christian subculture in which they had previously worked. Pritzl's lyrics open up his heart and bare his soul with a frighteningly intense degree of self-revelation. This expression of abandonment and desolation might be a million miles from the platitudinous shiny happy Hallmark® certitudes of modern praise and worship, but can point to the psalmist's outpourings for precedent. Musically too `The Violet Burning' is an unsettling ride, with a three guitar line up resulting in a sound Pritzl referred to as `early feedback rock'. The Violet Burning's music is often compared to eighties acts like The Cure, but here they were more in tune with nineties grunge.
`crush' which opens the album can be seen as a statement of intent. Fuzzed up distorted guitars caterwauling about over the hammer blows of the drums, as Pritzl steers a more conventional vocal course through the maelstrom, but with bleak lyrics that capture the desperation of a man whose hopes have been dashed and who's so far down that he's hit the bottom and doesn't know if there's any way back: "I didn't think I would fall so far down....Maybe I never understood; maybe I'm just not pure. You tell me how you love me. Was that a lie? I'm not sure."
If there is a criticism it would be that on first hearing few individual songs stand out, and the album feels a little one-paced. It could also be argued that it forms an organic whole. Certainly with repeated listening differences become more apparent. `arabic tremolo radio' features opera from the aforementioned radio station picked up and transmitted through an effects pedal. The delicate, even mellow opening of `blind' comes as light relief after the opening onslaught, though lyrically Pritzl is still a lost man; "What went wrong? I'm blind, stone blind and I can't reach you". The respite is brief as the howl of pain that is `fever' follows. `the sun and the sky' and `low' are perhaps most noticeable for their conventionality: classic rock riffing, guitar solos, and romantic imagery. The simpler, unlayered sound of `underwater' gives the music a little more room to breathe. `eleven' is a delicate interlude, that moves seamlessly into the similarly restrained `feel' and although the album closes on a note of bleak desperation, the album as a whole is not without glimmers of hope. Perhaps not hope experienced, but at the least the possibility that there could be hope, if only it would be revealed.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Dense turbulent rock you should investigate, 2 April 2007
For my money one of the greatest lost secrets of rock 'n roll, The Violet Burning produced an absolute classic with this album. A triple guitar line-up helps to produced a thickly layered tapestry that reveals new sounds constantly with each new listen. There's not a track here that is worth fast forwarding. If there is a criticism, it's that the mid-tempo nature of the album is pretty uniform, but it avoids repetitiveness by virtue of the variety of sounds on offer.
The closest muscial reference-point is probably some of Radiohead of "The Bends" era - particularly "Bones", "Planet Telex" & "Bullet Proof", with a sound that in turn growls, shimmers, and turns to sludge in great dollops of almost grungey thickness. One track even uses a dodgy russian guitar pedal to 'channel' a mexican radio station playing opera- "Arabic Tremolo Radio".
Michael Pritzl has a great and highly distinctive voice that can soar, if not like say Thom Yorke or Jeff Buckley, then certainly with its own wistful beauty.
TVB are known as a christian band, but this album in particular (made after Michael went through a rough time with the church he was involved with, I understand) avoids any christianese and I can't imagine even the most ardent athiest would struggle with them. The lyrics are dark, personal and yearning tinged with hope, with topics including betrayal, depression, despair and love.
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