Black Light Burns - Cover Your Heart

  by Kelly Smith

published: 9 / 11 / 2008

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Review

If I’m being completely honest, and after all, it is the best policy, then the entire reason I wanted to hear this album is because of Track 3. I’m sure many of you have bought albums regardless of your feelings about Track 3, but are many of those tracks a cover of Duran Duran’s 'Hungry Like The Wolf' performed by a former member of Limp Bizkit? Exactly, so I needed to hear it. As chance would have it, 'Cover Your Heart' is actually an album of covers by Black Light Burns of all the bands who’ve inspired them individually throughout their lives. Which is great, but it doesn’t seem like a particularly inspiring collection of artists. Duran Duran I can understand, but I’m not sure Big Dumb Face counts in the same league, particularly since it’s a band Wes Borland formed whilst still in Limp Bizkit and shortly before he formed Black Light Burns. Citing yourself as an inspiration? It’s a bold move, but as Borland says on the press release “it’s for people who are already familiar artists, but mostly people who are not”. In which case, I’m the perfect candidate, because, while I’ve heard of most of these artists, I had to double check the tracks covered here. The album is good, if a little synth-y sounding, but that’s possibly the fact that many of these songs were made by bands around the 1980s'. The disappointing thing here is that Black Light Burns haven’t really made an effort to make anything different. I like cover versions of songs because it gives the opportunity to change it, to make it your own song, to express a classic in a completely contemporary way, but here, everything sounds the same as it did on the original, only a bit worse. Especially on the Sisters of Mercy cover, Lucretia 'My Reflection', Borland seems to be doing everything he can to make his voice sound as similar as possible to Andrew Eldritch, the Sisters of Mercy's vocalist. Musically, there’s nothing outstanding about this album. It’s all fairly standard fare which is a bit disappointing. Maybe on an original album they’d have more space to showcase their talents but here it seems like a vehicle to introduce artists they like and other artists you might like. The songs aren’t bad, just old. The PJ Harvey cover 'Rid Of Me' was already a good song, so Black Light Burns aren’t reinventing the wheel, but I do like their version. It just makes me wish they’d do more. As for 'Hungry Like The Wolf', it left me cold. Well not cold. Tepid, let’s say. A bit less electronic and a bit more raw, this could have sounded amazing. In general, it’s a good album, if you’re looking to listen to songs you know sang in a familiar way, but by someone new. For me, it’s nothing that would make me sit up and take notice if I heard it playing somewhere. I’d like Duran Duran to do a cover of this album. Now that, would be worth listening to.

Track Listing:-

1 Forkboy
2 So Alive
3 Hungry Like The Wolf
4 Lucretia My Reflection
5 Rid Of Me
6 The Art Of Self Defense
7 On The Bound
8 I Am The Sun
9 Blood Red Head On Fire
10 Search And Destroy
11 Drowning Together, Dying Alone
12 Failing
13 Ribbons
14 Zargon Marfoauf
15 Vennisoun
16 Zlitchufdux
17 Giving In Again