By Matt Levine
Alternative Rock World/Dead Center
Energetic and hard rocking, yet somewhat melodic, the debut full length
from Fuel, Sunburn, focuses well on the music and propels itself on its
instrumentations, but never forgets about the song and the emotion. The
album's first single, "Shimmer," greatly epitomizes the ballads and other
slow-tempo tunes on the album with its swooping, almost orchestral, guitars
and intriguing, often profound lyrics. The track that follows "Shimmer,"
"Jesus Or a Gun" epitomizes the harder tunes on the album with its nice mix
of cacophonous guitars with an infectious melody line below. One minor
problem with Sunburn is the juxtaposition of "Mary Pretends" and "Ozone,"
two songs with remotely similar sounds and many mentionings of the word
"fly" in both tunes as well. Not a terrible full-length debut effort for a
band from a town of less than 1,000 people in Pennsylvania, Sunburn
proves to be an extremely solid set of exciting rock tunes.
Copyright 1998 Alternative Rock World. All Rights Reserved.