I’m not sure what it is, but I had some difficulty getting into Burning Image. When I initially listened to their music, I found myself a little bored and unimpressed at times. A disappointment to be sure, because Burning Image was touted as one of the diamonds in the rough, a frontrunner among a slough of mediocre bands plaguing a stagnant music scene in perhaps the most unlikely locales imaginable: Bakersfield, Calif. That’s not to say that the songs they played were absolutely terrible. I do give them credit for being surprisingly original during their time, and I can’t fault them for doing something different. Sadly, the energy behind the album felt like intermittent discharges of static electricity when it could have commanded the heart-rending 1.21 gigawatts of a fractured lightning bolt.

Burning Image had a very strong heart as well as a keen mind. Their lyrics were scathingly critical of religion, war, government and conformity. They were also fierce advocates of individual identity, sticking up for oneself and one's beliefs, as well as questioning the authority and social control human beings had over one another. I occasionally found myself more intrigued by Moe Adame’s liner-note reflections of the individual songs than the actual tracks themselves. While Burning Image played an eclectic fusion of punk and gothic styles and definitely had their shining moments, what they lacked was the ability to draw you in entirely. But who knows, a month from now I’ll probably discover that I actually like this album a lot more than I originally anticipated. A few more listens will more than likely confirm it.