February 25, 2007

YouTube Rodeo: BURN's "Godhead" Live In Philadelphia



We love YouTube. This is sort of an obvious statement, but we'll make it anyway: there are things on YouTube that you never thought you would ever get a chance to see. Today's example is the high-quality live video of New York hardcore behemoth BURN performing "Godhead." By the time we got into New York hardcore it was on the wane. We think BURN had already broken up (well, sort of, according to Wikipedia) and its successor acts including BURN singer Chaka Malik's Orange 9MM was already gearing up to release its debut EP on Revelation, which in our opinion is the best thing the band ever did. Anyway, Malik is one of the best singers hardcore ever produced, up there with Pat Dubar, Rollins, Mackaye. And although every second and every lyric of BURN's song "Drown" is classic, perhaps the ultimate snippet is Malik howling "HEAR ME. I'M CALLING OUT" from the song "Godhead," also from the aforementioned BURN EP. The moment never fails to raise the hair on the back of our neck. And we never, in a million years, thought we'd ever actually see it live. But thanks to YouTube, we've got the next best thing. And it happens at 2:47 into the clip we've posted above. This is a little too heavy for a Sunday morning. But it is also undeniable. It's also a relatively deluxe three-camera job, a level of quality rare for hardcore videos. BURN reformed to record an album Cleanse earlier in this decade, but we're not sure what its members are doing now.

[Buy the BURN EP from Revelation here]

BURN: InterWeb | MySpace | YouTube | Flickr | Wikipedia

BONUS VIDEOS: Frail in 1995 [clip]. Youth Of Today performing the classic "Disengage" on a reunion tour date [clip].

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