Album Review: Joshua Burnside – Into The Depths of Hell

After a stunning live album and 2017’s breakout EPHRATA, Joshua Burnside is back – angrier and moodier than ever before. As much in the tradition of rock and roll as it is Celtic folk, his sophomore LP positions the young songwriter firmly within the realm of the greats.

Most of the big subjects are up for grabs, as Burnside grapples with the weight of a crumbling world that has been positioned squarely on the shoulders of his generation. He rails against human consumption and thoughtless waste on ‘Under The Concrete’, poverty on ‘Nothing For Ye’ – and even colonialism and classism on ‘And You Evade Him / Born In The Blood’.

Rife with uncut gems, he has pulled out all the stops here. Into The Depths of Hell was largely produced independently by Burnside, and it ripples with an undercurrent of brooding emotion – its strings are mournful; its voice deceptively sweet; poetry piercing; percussion crashing.

Using found sounds, an autotune segment and rain samples to round off its postmodernism, ‘Driving Alone In The City At Night’ shows Burnside to be at his most experimental and existential, confronting mortality in a lyrical masterclass.

Into The Depths of Hell proves with unwavering ease that it will go down in history in much the same way as Fitzcarraldo did for The Frames: an essential entry in the catalogue of Celtic rock.

Stream the album below, or consider purchasing it on Bandcamp, as it's Bandcamp Friday.

• 9/10
• Out Now.