August Burns Red – ‘Guardians’ (Fearless Records)

By Jason Walker

August Burns Red have been around for quite a while now, coming out of the woodwork in the metalcore boom around the late 2000s and are now a mainstay of the scene. Prior to this release, their previous record, ‘Phantom Anthem’, is one of my outright favourite albums so getting to review this new release is something I jumped at the chance to do. This is their ninth studio album, which is no joke, these guys have been doing this a long time now so I’m eager to see how they’ve pushed themselves this time and kept it fresh.

‘Guardians’ comes in at 11 tracks which generally hover around the four-minute mark, and after a couple of initial listens it’s very much what you’d expect from August Burns Red in the way of rhythmic chugs, soaring guitar melodies and piercing uncleans.

First track, ‘The Narrative’ wastes absolutely zero time introducing the album with hitting you with August Burns Red’s signature style, although notably backing synths seem way more apparent here. Really loving the tapped guitar melodies throughout this song also. Second track ‘Bones’ has probably one of my favourite guitar melodies on the whole album, that lick over the top of the chorus sounds almost like a theremin, proper catchy and makes it super uplifting!

August Burns Red’s signature sound is all over this album, ‘Paramount’ is another standout favourite for me with it’s frantic pace beset with soaring melodies. With each track playing, I’m trying to envisage which ones would be included in their next live set, I can definitely see ‘Defender’ being included and it’s immediate follow-up ‘Lighthouse’ – hopefully one after the other as they flow into each other quite well!

If you’re a fan of their ‘elastic’ tapping melodies then you’ll be straight onto loving ‘Dismembered Melody’ as this has them in heaps all the way through the song, everything else in it is so bloody heavy you’d have to get a claim in for headbang-whiplash. So far the album has been quite consistent in its sound and August Burns Red follows a pretty solid doctrine of don’t fix what’s not broken so while most of the album has generally similar elements, it doesn’t stop each track being an absolute banger in its own right.

‘Ties That Bind’ is another big anthemic song that I can easily see frantic pits being formed with people going bonkers after a few beers, it’s big, it’s hyper-melodic and just an all-round great song. ‘Bloodletter’ has a pretty filthy breakdown at the end of it too that I can see being a great mid-show entry that’ll leave some people with their heads spinning after it.

‘Empty Heaven’ reminds me a lot of shows that I’ve seen in Manchester’s Rebellion venue with the intro being screamed back right at the band with raised arms just prior to everything kicking off wildly when the main riff hits. It’s got a bloody great guitar solo in there as well but my god it’s an intense song that is going to cause quite a bit of stir if they’re going to have this in their live set.

Finally, the album closes with ‘Three Fountains’, a six minute and 22 second epic which oddly sounds a lot melancholier in its tone when compared with the overall aggressiveness of the rest of ‘Guardians’. It’s got all the hallmarks you’d come to expect from August Burns Red’s sound, but with atmospheric and somewhat proggy passages mixed in with it. It wraps up another solid effort from these guys and is more than a worthy follow-up to their ‘Phantom Anthem’ album and hopefully a lot of the songs on this will become mainstays of their live sets and all being well, will see them doing more headline tours throughout the UK and Europe.

FFO: Killswitch Engage, While She Sleeps, Betraying The Martyrs, Heart of a Coward

‘Guardians’ is released on 3 April. You can get your copy HERE.

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