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Cedars - Cowards Reviewed By BurnYourEars! Monday August 9 2021, 6:25 PM

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Cedars - Cowards Reviewed By BurnYourEars ! Check it out here at this link: https://www.burnyourears.de/reviews/alben/progressive-rock/52295-cedars-cowards.html

On their new album "Cowards" CEDARS from Texas combine the voices of PIXIES and RADIO HEAD with industrial elements à la NINE INCH NAILS and create an electronic rock album with a lot of depth.

Drifting on the sea and Raven in the club
Over eleven songs, the quartet invites you on a journey through various musical landscapes. The opening track "Claymore" immediately attracts everyone's attention with its deep and powerful sound, whereby the combination of instrumental and electronic music scores. As a further layer, the faded vocals of the lead singer and the second singer lie over the music and complement the already extremely strong atmosphere with even more depth.

The band chose a suitable first song that offers a good foretaste of the rest of the record and makes you want more: Overall, "Cowards" has a very rich sound and offers certain variations from song to song, which keep the style fresh and break up the overall work a bit.

While "Mockingbirds", for example, is reminiscent of the pop of the late 90s, until the guitars hit the chorus like a board, in "Give Up The Ghost" you literally find yourself in a sweaty, gloomy club on a rave while the sweat drips from the ceiling. In this industrial-heavy song, the pithy and oppressive music stands in a pleasant contrast to the anthemic singing, which gives the song a completely different tone, which nevertheless fits perfectly – CEDARS play with opposites and combine them appropriately with each other.

Exploring boundaries
The texts also fit harmoniously into the overall oeuvre. "Lost At Sea", as the title suggests, revolves around isolation and creates the feeling of floating helplessly but at the same time peacefully on the sea. This song opens with a driving synthesizer, accompanied by the verses: "Burn everything, all is lost. I'm floating out at sea." The vocals and instrumentals complement each other perfectly and create an immense immersion that is maintained throughout the song. In the lyrics, the group finds exactly the right words to describe the mood of their music.

"Chasing Vapor", on the other hand, is about exuberance and effort, which turns out to be in vain. In the chorus, for example, it says: "Chasing vapor flying too close to the sun. These wings are paper and nothing is enough." Meanwhile, the song opens up and changes from an oppressive instrumental part with deep vocals to a graceful synthesizer segment, accompanied by high vocals. The lyrics here are program and reflect how the music sounds almost like flies. CEDARS use all levels of music to create an atmospheric oeuvre and to live out their creativity.

result:
With "Cowards", the Texan group delivers a coherent complete work that offers a very deep and well thought-out sound. In doing so, she does justice to the sources of inspiration mentioned at the beginning and gives her electronic rock its own touch through the colorful mixture of influences.

Fans of music that slowly builds up and unfolds should be able to gain a lot from this album. However, if you are hoping for shallow rock with isolated electronic elements, you are at the wrong address: CEDARS go far beyond that and create a much deeper sound than bands that only integrate synthlines into their music. Instead, this work blurs the boundaries between instrumental and electronic music. - BurnYourEars

FFO: Mutemath, NIN, Chelsea Wolfe

Released: JUNE 11, 2021

Cedars is an electronic rock band from Texas whose music incorporates the DIY ethos of bands like The Pixies and PJ Harvey, the haunting atmospheres of Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, along with the infectious grooves of MuteMath.

Cedars is more than just a band: it is a vision of community, a community driven by the idea that beauty can save the world. Led by longtime friends Sandeigh Kennedy and Drew Heaton, they blend industrial and organic textures, drawing together disparate elements to marry complex sonic landscapes with compelling stories. Gritty synths and wispy vocals; hard hitting beats and delicate textures are the tools they use to tell powerful, authentic stories that explore truth and beauty.