Burial — Untrue

Missing the mark

Album score: 5.7
Audio score: 5.6

Equipment:

Source: Tidal HiFi
DAC: Topping D30 Pro
Amp: Topping A30 Pro
Cans: Audeze LCD — X
EQ: Small bass-boost and small boost around 4kHz

Album review:

EDIT: After listening to another Burial production that I really enjoyed, I revisited this album and I have completely changed my mind about it. As much as the album didn’t connect with me as can be read below, it does now. At this point in time I have listened to this album many times and I even consider it to be among the top albums in my libary. Music is anything but an exact science. I will leave the review below unedited, to examplify how fluid music and art can be.

Score: 5.7

I always check a few seconds of a few songs before I start my listening session for a review. I do this so that I can select the proper equipment. For this album, it was clear that there was a dark vibe I was getting into. Luckily, this matched well with what I felt like today. So I made my lights dark red, dimmed them and got ready. Secondly, this album was recommended by a friend whose taste I respect a lot. We have a long history of sharing music, raising my expectations. Unfortunately, I was in for a big disappointment.

The disappointment didn’t come immediately: the opening track is what you want for a dark album. It helps you slide into the mood and builds up for what is to come. But when the vocals in the second track started, I knew something was up here. To me, these vocals are a complete mismatch with the music. They are about, love? Desire? Wasn’t this supposed to be a dark album? Throughout the album, this stays a theme. Lyrics like “I can’t take my eyes off you”, matches with dark sounds. I really don’t like it at all. Every time I get into it a little, the vocals take me right out of it.

And getting into it isn’t easy either. The beats lack substance, sound soft and without any authority. The industrial supporting sounds in the mid and high frequency range are standard and dull. This all together makes for a poor foundation. Making matters worse, is that the vocals are in need of an exceptionally solid foundation. They are extremely overpowered, with an insane amount of reverb over them. They basically drown out all other sounds. And this is not a problem of a single song, this is basically what every song sounds like. It sounds like a one-trick pony, whose trick isn’t so impressive.

The only way I can see this music work, is while spending a long night behind my computer, researching into some topic until the sun starts coming up. For sitting down and listening to it, it completely misses the mark for me. I would describe it as underwhelming, simplistic and gimmicky. The last track of the album seems to have something going for it, but at this point I can’t be bothered to really focus on it. Overall I didn’t enjoy it and the only reason it doesn’t score below 5.5 is that the album is quite unique, which deserves some credit.

Audio review:

Score: 5.6

The sound quality of the album is unimpressive. The sound is messy, unbalanced and low resolution. All coherence between sounds is absent. It sounds like one big messy pile of sounds drowning each other out, without a foundation to support. There are no real issues to be named, except for a badly mixed loud high pitch sound every now and then. The problem with the sound of this album isn’t specific issues. It is consistently low quality.

In its defense, there is a clear LoFi approach here, which is a bit of an excuse for the poor sound quality. However, going LoFi is a tool to achieve something, for example warmth. To my ears, the LoFi sound here achieves a bit little of darkness, but not to the extent that it is worth it in the first place.

To sum up, I would describe the sound as empty, unbalanced, messy, low resolution, narrow and small.

What album should I review next? Let me know in the comments or at:

soundgeekreviews@gmail.com