Starvin Hungry, Cold Burns

Starvin Hungry’s Cold Burns comes across less like an album of individual songs and more like one not-very-exciting song reworked a few times. Sure, it’s okay to have a signature sound, but when everything remains at the same volume and tempo for almost forty minutes, there’s a problem. Listen to the first three tracks and tell me they didn’t all spawn from the same half-hour jam session.

Throughout Cold Burns, the Montreal-based group straddles the line between punkish discordance and discernible melody but doesn’t stir up anything notable on either side. “The Triumph of Non” sounds like it aspires to be Soundgarden circa 1994. “Pink/Black” is more angular and less grungy, but equally unimpressive. At their best, like on “Well Below the Bottom,” Starvin Hungry deviates from sounding like a genre band by kicking up the artistry a notch, masking witty hooks with scraping walls of guitar. Unfortunately, the bottom line is that in spite of their undeniable high energy, Cold Burns is an album stunningly easy to forget.