Tweet

Album Details

• Artist: The Burning Of Rome
• Album: Living In The Lie
• Label: Self-Released
• Year of Release: 2007
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: mschmitt on 2007-06-09

Did that really happen? Did I just listen to all of that, or was it some sort of awful dream? Did I take opium or some other hallucinogen and pass out? Really, you can tell me. Otherwise I’m going to go ahead and describe the wondrous, frightening, and whimsical sounds I have just heard. Well…okay. You haven’t heard anything like The Burning of Rome’s Living in the Lie. I say that with such confidence, I would be willing to make a bet on it with every cent I’ve ever owned. This is like some sort of hellish combination of a Mario game soundtrack and “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” It’s as diverse as the Halloween-organ psych-fest “Race to Build a Bomb” to the much-too-vivid recount of the “Rape of Lucretia.” Found here are a slew of instruments, some you’d find on a merry-go-round, others you’d hear in the streets of Paris, others you hope you’ll never hear again. “Like Frying A Small Fish” sounds like a track of off the “Amelie” soundtrack, featuring rich French melodies. In stark contrast is “Hard Times,” the song of a merry-go-round gone bad. Half a proper album, half a musical (think “The Nightmare Before Christmas” meets “Streetcar”), Living in the Lie is just simply weird. What is this supposed to be? Flexing musical muscles to their fullest extent, no matter where that takes you? A joke? Or simply someone’s idea of what music should be? Not that this is bad music. “Dear Israel…” features great acoustic guitar work, and the majority of the album is well-executed and thought out. It’s just damn weird—that’s all. If you aren’t at least moderately curious to hear what the hell The Burning of Rome sounds like by now, I’ve failed as a writer. Albeit to say: you’ve never heard this sort of music before, and you never will again. You might not like it (actually, 95% chance you won’t), but maybe you will. Just maybe this is what you’ve been waiting for your entire life, and you didn’t even realize it.

User Reviews and Comments

Log In or Register to Rate Albums