Review: Marrower – The Burning Ship

Style: Melodic Death Metal, Epic Doom Metal, Power Metal (Mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Scar Symmetry, Nevermore, Khemmis
Country: California, United States
Release date: 27 September 2024

It is not a stretch to assume that English functions marvelously as a navigation language: so many words are baked into its lexicon, even being used as the basis for the official maritime language, Seaspeak. One of the language’s most acclaimed pieces of literature, Moby Dick, spends copious amounts of time explaining the ins and outs of navigation and ship mechanics in service of an intense and climactic battle at its end. So naturally, many nautical phrases have made it into common English vernacular, such as “smooth sailing,” “loose cannon,” and of interest to us today, “burn the ship,” an idiom for destroying your way back, forcing yourself onto a particular path along with inspiration for Marrower’s debut, The Burning Ship. Does their debut see them going down in flames, or does The Burning Ship see them riding victoriously into the sunset?

Marrower’s sound is an eclectic mix of modern metal styles, at times veering into the epic doom of Khemmis (“Crawling Home”) while at others accelerating haphazardly into melodeath territory à la Scar Symmetry (“Darkness My Witness,” “Swallowing the Sun”). Comparisons to Nevermore or a slightly less proggy Need can also be drawn, particularly in the riff construction and the rough timbre of vocalist and guitarist Max Hodes. The Burning Ship’s title track opens the album with the sound of, naturally, a burning ship over acoustic guitar before immediately tearing the listener’s face off with “Darkness My Witness,” and it rarely lets up from there, reserving quieter, slower, and more somber moments for the middle (“Crawling Home”) and end (“Holy Offer”) of the album.

Vocal performances anchor The Burning Ship: Max Hodes alternates freely between charismatic gruff cleans and serviceable belching harsh vocals across The Burning Ship, exuding a supreme confidence throughout: Hodes is not afraid to throw his voice around with reckless abandon, giving at times a wild and untamed feeling to his clean vocal performance. “Swallowing the Sun” is a quick-and-dirty power metal track that sees Hodes keep up with fast-paced instrumentation with ease; Hodes taps into his inner Chris Cornell on “Tempest” with copious gravelly belting; and “Crawling Home” features a somber performance that, despite a couple of eyebrow-raising lyrical choices, makes for a decent palate cleanser to the roaring high-energy harpoon fire of the initial three tracks. However, opening track “Darkness My Witness” does the best job of showcasing Hodes’s impressive range, beginning the track with gnarly harshes, introducing soaring cleans across the choruses, and concluding with some of the highest notes on the album delivered with the force of a hundred cannons.

Like any inflamed vessel, though, there are splits and cracks to be found in The Burning Ship’s structure: while Nick Benigno’s drums relentlessly crash into the listener on faster-paced tracks and there are plenty of excellent riffs peppered across the album, the songwriting and album construction leave a lot to be desired. The Burning Ship proves itself to be aggressively front-loaded: much of its latter half extends ideas well beyond their substance, with tracks like “Nausea” cleverly iterating around a central idea that unfortunately runs out of steam two-thirds of the way through. Moreover, for every great riff and musical passage, there are just as many only okay ones, meaning that certain bits stick well but just as many wash over me completely: no matter how many times I listen to “Crawling Home” or “Growing Old Without Her,” I simply couldn’t tell you what happens on these tracks save for a moment or two. A bit of editing of the tracklist and a more compact and focused approach to longer tracks would prove beneficial not only to the songs themselves but would augment the experience as a whole, bringing it to a more digestible length and also assuaging problems with weaker and less memorable ideas.

At its end, The Burning Ship left me with complicated feelings—its first half is packed with great metal passages, doomy riffs, and a vocal performance that exudes gritty charisma, but I often struggle to see Marrower’s point of view or even remember the weaker moments in its second half, severely marring The Burning Ship’s promising first impressions. Truthfully, it was a frustrating experience to write this review as I had trouble even figuring out what it was that didn’t sit with me, as the performances are clearly competent but I can’t for the life of me connect emotionally with the music. With a bit of clever navigation and a focus on editing ideas, Marrower have lots of potential to bring their burning ship to safety in the future.

Recommended tracks: Darkness My Witness, Ice Winds, Tempest, Swallowing the Sun
You may also like: Oak, Ash, & Thorn, Need, Cellador
Final verdict: 6/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Independent

Marrower is:
– Max Hodes (vocals, guitars)
– Nick Willbrand (bass, vocals, keyboards)
– Nick Benigno (drums)