The Black Map #214: The Hope Burden from Oxford!

Treking over snow capped mountains, cutting our way through Jungle undergrowth, crossing treacherous rivers and walking through graveyards in the dead of night, we head from the sunny south coast city of Brighton and Glass Grave to leafy Oxford to talk about The Hope Burden for this week’s essential hangover reading. It’s Sunday morning, so put on a big pot of coffee, pop a couple of asprin and try not to think too much about those bits of last night that you simply can’t remember. After all, then the Jägermeister flows, when and where the train ride stops, nobody knows.

Six years ago in 2016, vocalist Josh Day, bassist Ryan Thornton, drummer Phil Platt and guitarists Neil Brewer and Jason Smalley formed The Hope Burden with a vision of creating Post-Metal with elements of Ambient, Black Metal, Post-Hardcore and Sludge Metal in their beating black hearts seeking a catharsis for troubled minds. They took their time to perfect their ideas and innovations, taking great care to ensure that they had done justice to every single note they had written while at the same time getting the message across and in 2018 released their debut EP “Decline. Despair. Decay“. A trio of anguish ridden songs soaked in blood, sweat and tears, written in meloncholic moments with dark atmospherics and dangerous thoughts. The strength and conviction of the material took them to Bloodstock Open Air Festival having won the 2019 incarnation Metal 2 the Masses competition before affording them the opportunity to share stages with Raging Speedhorn, Napalm Death and Hacktivist as well as play annual home city Festival Rabidfest, such is it’s award winning nature.  Innevitably delaying things with a Global catastrophe happening around them, they postponed the release of their sophomore record “Abandonment // I Want To Be Well” until 2022, bridging the gap with a couple of singles in 2020 to keep us warm during the long cold nights of the winter of discontent. When it was finally released, the EP not only lit the fires in our hearts, resonating with our own troubles but left the gas on before igniting what becomes a raging inferno. It’s critically acclaimed by Metal Noise (who are they?!) and so we recommend you go and listen to it before the day is out. After all, if we can’t recommend you some essential listening, what are we here for?