Beyond Coma and Despair could be the last album with lyrical themes concern on life struggle, self misery, depressive mind, and life despair. The reason is, the protagonist behind that was the frontman and vocalist
Ivan Scumbag - who passed away a few weeks before this album officially released in mid-2006. The fact, Burgerkill latest album
Venomous (2011), is totally different to its predecessors in lyrical themes. For the man behind the stage of
Beyond Coma and Despair, Burgerkill relied on Yayat Achdiat (ex-Jasad) as sound engineer and producer.
The album comprises twelve tracks with fifty five minutes of music. It's different to its predecessor
Berkarat which's sung entirely in Indonesian
Bahasa. In this third release, Burgerkill mostly used English lyrics. In musical part, the album offers what we describe as violent and aggressive sound. As Burgerkill showed us the fierce and ferocity noise, it does not mean they leave the groovy and melodic guitar play. Track
Anjing Tanah for instance; within six minutes, begins with some acoustic play as intro, with adopting
Javanese gamelan scale pattern, the song leaves us in such a quiet mystical moment for a while. But, hey wait, you'll find the song switched and followed by utterly explicit scream; "anjing tanah!", which means "soil dog" - and then, the true brutal
Anjing Tanah song begins to attack your eardrums. With Burgerkill prodigious and rumbling sound,
Beyond Coma and Despair also brings some slightly technical and progressive within metalcore blended with the kind of death taste. Opening track
Darah Hitam Kebencian (meaning:
The Black Blood of Hatred is the real example alongside with
Anjing Tanah and
Unblessing Life. Just like Burgerkill vicious rhythm and killer guitar riffs, vocals part is absolutely great part. Ivan renowned with his fury and straight forward screams. He used middle scream and sometimes reached the highest pitch. In some parts we can hear his articulation well enough. In addition, Ivan also took part in some depressive spoke words in the backing vocals line. With powerful tracks such as
Shadow of Sorrow,
Darah Hitam Kebencian and
Last Escape, I believe these tracks will always be included in every Burgerkill setlist of the stage - whenever and wherever Burgerkill have the chance to blast the moshpit. Try
Shadow of Sorrow, you'll know what I mean; the track is absolutely classic, typical top weapon to burn metalheads hysteria of the concert.
Listening to all track of the album, I rather hard to mention explicitly name by name what band exactly influenced Burgerkill musical touch. All tracks offer us great song composition. Each track has less similarity to each other in the leaning. The best thing I could say is Burgerkill didn't use any particular band influences into their musical touch. Probably they took musical inspiration from any music genre to blend and build their own original touch. They have great musicianship and well enough capability in composing song structure in order to support their own sound signature. Lastly, I would have to say; this is great release. I don't care at all about depressive and despair lyrics. Who cares if they sing about holy books or some neurotic Freudian sh
it! The most valuable thing is the energetic music and...yea, Ivan's hell scream kicked my ass - but not my balls yet! The biggest Burgerkill challenge is how the new vocalist, Vicky, fits himself singing this album material in live concert. I think they already knew since they decided to choose Vicky as their new frontman.
