Band:	Rezn
Album:	Burden
Style:	Stoner metal
Release date:	June 2024

01. Indigo
02. Instinct
03. Descent Of Sinuous Corridors
04. Bleak Patterns
05. Collapse
06. Soft Prey
07. Chasm

Rezn took their time after 2020’s Chaotic Divine, but they’ve been rife with industry in the past two years, and what’s more, they’re producing quantity without sacrificing quality.

Solace was a welcome return from the group, and it was shortly followed by Silent Future, a collaborative release made alongside Vinnum Sabbathi. Only 15 months after the release of Solace, Rezn have now released another new album, this time Burden, and what’s more, they have Mike Sullivan from Russian Circles cameoing with a solo on closing song “Chasm”. Just like Solace, Burden is adorned with some sensational album art from Adam Burke, and the musical contents contain material generally worthy of said art.

Solace was already shorter and more compact than Chaotic Divine, and with a 35-minute runtime, Burden is even more compact. The compactness of the previous album was aided in part by a consolidation of approach, as Solace focused more on calm, psychedelic soundscapes and gradual dynamics rather than the variety heard on Chaotic Divine. With Burden, Rezn have broadly picked up where they left off, maintaining a slow-to-mid tempo pretty much throughout as they traverse quiet contemplation and dense stoner doom heaviness.

Without venturing into the eerie drone that kicked off the preceding album, there are multiple songs here that focus almost entirely on hazy dreaminess; this includes opening song “Indigo”, which sustains a subtle ominous feel to its gloomy guitar soundscapes, while both bringing retro vibes with the psychedelic vocals and dabbling with new sounds during a rather trippy synth-tinged midsection. “Soft Prey” pretty much replicates “Indigo” in terms of vibe and intensity, but the saxophone solo does coincide with a segment that feels a bit indebted to prog rock. Rezn craft some compelling music when they dwell in their softer side, but songs that exhibit the capacity on occasion to dial up the heaviness and the distortion, such as “Instinct” and “Collapse”, do benefit from the expanded range, particularly the darker and more sinister “Collapse”.

At the other end of the spectrum are Rezn’s more concerted dives into heaviness, which are confined to “Bleak Patterns” and “Chasm”. The former, once it truly gets going, does have a very classic stoner doom feel to it, albeit with some interesting licks within its riffs that remind me of The Silent Bell Toll by Terminus. “Chasm” is rather crunchier in approach, arguably spilling a bit over into sludge territory, but it is that aforementioned solo from Sullivan that sends the album into arguably its strongest sequence; it’s a unique-sounding, at times slightly esoteric style of soloing, and its conclusion triggers a colossal conclusion to the album, during which the volume and distortion are increasingly ramped up until the album dissolves into static and noise.

“Chasm” makes for a fairly emphatic endng to Burden; on the whole, however, I feel the album is perhaps not quite as impressive or memorable as its predecessor. It scratches a very similar itch, but it perhaps lacks a bit in memorable or attention-grabbing moments, with the end result of an album that is engaging and compelling with its tone and vibe, but also an album that doesn’t quite demand one’s continued attention. Still, it's an album that ranks among the more intriguing in stoner metal this year.