Fall Guys Tumble on the Cutting Room Floor (Burning From The Inside - Bauhaus)

Member Name: Frankingsteins

Product:	Burning From The Inside - Bauhaus
Date:	13/02/08 (20 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Some more material that may never have happened.

Disadvantages: A disappointing swan song.

Bauhaus' final album is ridden with problems and disappointments that are more easily understood when considering this was ultimately a posthumous release once internal difficulties had seen the band go their separate ways, and it fails to capture the dark, experimental, gothic style of its predecessors in favour of bland and repetitive radio-friendly rock. This is the first album to lack any kind of overall consistency, as some songs are still pretty good, particularly the openers 'She's in Parties' and 'Antonin Artuad' which are the only ones to truly sound like Bauhaus songs, the latter even featuring a repeating backing woof reminiscent of later works by Type O Negative, but most are pretty rubbish, or merely fall victim to bad creative decisions.

Despite the ballads and spoken word songs often proving to be the least successful on earlier releases, this album is rife with such mediocre material. 'Who Killed Mr. Moonlight?' is a piano song that conveys none of the usual darkness but doesn't replace it with any other recognisable kind of emotion, 'Kingdom's Coming' does a similar thing but on acoustic guitar, and 'Honeymoon Croon' is another attempt to sound like the Fall that falls flat. There's even a weak attempt to provide an interlude song in the form of the pointless 'Wasp' as an ever more pointless introduction to 'King Volcano,' a dull and overlong acoustic jangle with some chanting towards the end that seems to be targeting an audience base that I'm not familiar with at all.

The progressive style seems to be evident when taking a look at the tracklist and eyeing up the nine-minute 'Burning from the Inside,' but this turns out to be the dullest of the lot, making poor use of its tedious playing time by repeating the same guitar riff over and over, and not featuring anything of real interest in the form of the other instruments and vocals. There's no way this song should be this long, I presume it was merely stretched out to avoid the band having to fill the space with another bland composition, but fortunately the finale diffuses some of this irritation; although 'Hope' is a break with tradition by being uncharacteristically optimistic, it's a nice closing note to end their career with, even if some fans will be ironically upset by it.

1. She's in Parties
2. Antonin Artuad
3. Wasp
4. King Volcano
5. Who Killed Mr. Moonlight?
6. Slice of Life
7. Honeymoon Croon
8. Kingdom's Coming
9. Burning from the Inside
10. Hope

Summary: Bauhaus' fourth album (1983).