Album Review: Rezn, Burden
One would not accuse Chicago-based atmospheric heavy rockers Rezn of shyness in terms of conveying their intent. To wit, Burden — their fifth full-length and first to be issued through Sargent House — follows behind 2023’s Solace (review here) — and has the stated intention of conveying a feeling of hardship, a darker representation to complement the soothing cosmic fluidity of the previous LP. They are still lush in melody with the soulful mystique in guitarist Rob McWilliams‘ vocals, and given complexity through the synthesizer, saxophone, flute, piano and lap-steel guitar of Spencer Ouellette, but as Phil Cangelosi bass underscores the standout chorus of second cut “Instinct” and Patrick Dunn‘s drums hammer away behind the floating lyric, “Hanging onto the razor’s edge,” the sense of burden in Burden is channeled both through the emotionality and the sheer weight of tone.
The seven-song/34-minute album’s opener, “Indigo” (‘blue’ in a the-blues sense, perhaps) taps into urgency that’s been rare for Rezn to-date — their debut was 2017’s Let it Burn (review here) — with siren wails of guitar or synth pulled against a backdrop of darker swirl, low end distortion a foreboding current brought to a sudden stop for an aftermath of synth drone. It’s not the last, as the arriving-early interlude “Descent of Sinuous Corridors” casts a brief hypnosis in a nonetheless exploratory 70 seconds after “Instinct,” a build of drums in the last few of those seconds giving directly over to “Bleak Patterns,” which serves as a worthy centerpiece and is the longest inclusion on the record at 6:52.
Ouellette‘s lap-steel weeps for some unknown loss as Dunn holds the pattern on drums and McWilliams‘ guitar touches on a folkish melancholia to complement the verse, only to stop short, rear back, and unleash a crush heretofore unheard on Burden; a willful plunge made and repeated throughout the chorus as the vocals carry on with the downward melody. Indeed, there is a pattern, and it is bleak, though it is somewhat the nature of their style that the listener can find room enough in what’s happening at a given moment — whether that’s “Bleak Patterns” being brought down on one’s head or the reaches left empty in “Descent of Sinuous Corridors” just minutes and epochs of distorted spacetime earlier — to inhabit a place.
That is less the purpose here than in Solace, presumably, and one can read that into the material and the flow from one piece into the next, and so on, but as concrete and heavy as they get, Rezn still give their audience the opportunity to dwell in the mix. Not lacking in impact, as the likes of “Instinct” and “Bleak Patterns” and the concluding “Chasm” — toward which Mike Sullivan of Russian Circles contributes a noisy guitar solo — Burden is nonetheless resonant, and one has to acknowledge the power of suggestion in terms of its narrative and impression. That is to say, if you end up finding a comfortable warmth in some of the psychedelic drift and emergent lurch of “Collapse” — which for sure has more than an edge of the depressive in lyrics like, “Can’t unsee spirals tightening/No reprieve suspending disbelief/Immolate, colors turn to gray/Acclimate to a long decay” — and taking ‘solace’ in the emotional presence of McWilliams‘ vocals and the alien expanses the band evoke instrumentally, I wouldn’t tell you you’re doing it wrong, even if it is counterintuitive to the concept.
Or maybe it isn’t, at all. Because how often does it happen that what we experience in art reflects back what we as viewers, listeners, consumers, bring to it of ourselves? And in that regard, if the weepy line of lap-steel before the two-minute mark in the penultimate “Soft Prey” — a precursor to Ouellette‘s saxophone solo, plus later bookend — gives some comfort by simply being relatable, has the art succeeded? Does that undercut the laid-out purpose behind Burden in conveying the darker aspects of Rezn‘s sound, of being the coin’s other side to Solace? I don’t think it does. And if the music makes you question why you feel what you feel at the time you’re experiencing it, I’ll argue your life just got fuller. In this way, and in being heavy the way one thinks of the churning semi-molten rock in Earth’s mantle beneath the cave painted in Adam Burke‘s cover art here, Burden is its own validation. Is it grimmer than Solace? Sure, in some ways; the lyrics are an example to cite. But at times, as in the patient chug that sets “Chasm” forth, it’s also more direct and terrestrial rather than celestial, and so it still broadens Rezn‘s scope as it exudes this gravitational force.
That is to say, the album — which was produced and mixed by Matt Russell in 2021 along with Solace and mastered by Zach Weeks at God City in Salem, Massachusetts — has a story it’s telling about what it does, but the thing about music that runs so deep is that once it’s out there and people start hearing it, they’re inevitably going to create their own stories for and with it too. Including this one, by the way. Taken as a vehicle for that, Burden is perhaps less a contradiction for Solace than a companion, though even that wouldn’t necessarily undercut the intention.
This is the part where I shrug my shoulders, say “I don’t fucking know,” and move on. Frankly, if you hear it and find it relatable on some level, whatever level — if it makes you feel something — I fail to see how that’s not success artistically. As to the noted corridors being descended, they are not entirely without light. It could be the concept emerged after the recording, as Rezn-circa-later-plague were thinking what to do with the glut of material they’d just put to tape and came to realize this natural divide within the songs. Once again, “I don’t fucking know.”
What I do know is that there are few bands in the US or otherwise within the spherical heavy underground who present such a tapestry in their work. And five records deep — even if Burden and Solace were tracked at the same time — there are few as immediately identifiable or as individual in their scope and execution. In seven years, Rezn have made a place utterly their own in heavy psych, cosmic doom, whatever you want to call their ‘genre.’ I’d be interested to know how the time since these sessions has changed them, especially given the touring they’ve undertaken since, but while Burden can do a lot for those who take it on with an open mind, it can’t do that. Instead, it snapshots a conceptualist (or at least thematic) side of Rezn unknown before Solace and showcases continued growth and ambition on the part of the band, hitting harder and digging further down than they have before. If that’s not enough, I don’t know what could be.
