Black Light Burns – Cruel Melody Review

Put aside your preconceptions for a second. Discard your judgments and cast off your assumptions. Do not allow bias, whether reasonable or irrational, to cloud your perception.

Because Black Light Burns is, essentially, Wes Borland’s band. But don’t hold his time in Limp Bizkit against him: Cruel Melody is, and there is no exaggeration to this statement, one of the very best albums to come out this year, regardless of genre.

The reason why Cruel Melody is so entertaining is partly due, one would imagine, to low expectations (see above comments), but it’s also because the album is an incredibly solid effort, something akin to one part HIM, one part Machines of Loving Grace, and one part Nine Inch Nails, with smatterings of funk and other odd variation throughout. This isn’t really a genre-crossing effort, though: the various songs all work TOGETHER, despite going in different directions, building nicely into an album where everything is different but all blends well. Normally highlighting spectacular tracks is common, and there are plenty, from the harder industrial sounding (and presumably written about Limp Bizkit) “Lies” to the slow-building but incredibly powerful “I Have a Need” to the infectious and up-tempo “4 Walls”. That said, all of the tracks on Cruel Melody are good to different degrees, and the worst thing you can say of any of them is that “Mesopotamia” is really, REALLY weird. That’s not really a criticism, though, so much as it’s just an observation; the song is still pretty good.

The bottom line is this: Fred Durst has been begging fans of Limp Bizkit to beg Wes Bornald to come back to the band. Do yourself a favor: buy Cruel Melody instead to tell him he never should. Don’t do it because you dislike Limp Bizkit, don’t do it because I said so. Do it because it’s a phenomenal album and it deserves every bit of success it can get. And, more importantly, do it because if this is the sort of thing Borland is cranking out when left to his own devices, it can only get better from here.

Website: Black Light Burns