Incorporating strong atmospheric elements into your brand of rock is not a new thing by any means, but to do it in a way that is beyond exceptional and makes for a truly immersive listen whose power cannot be deniable is something else entirely. Post-rock is often the best place to find acts like that, but, even then, you have to dig deep. It’s only after looking for some time, or the occasional stroke of luck, that you can find something that can only be described as a standout. By all intents and purposes, Give Up To Failure absolutely count as such.

While the very core of this album is undoubtedly rock that easily falls into that post designation, it’s everything that orbits that core which makes “Burden” such a layered and massively entertaining listen the likes of which I could not rip myself away from for hours. It’s the ambient and shoegaze elements that leap out to me the most since they immediately transform this record into something that feels so much deeper than what a normal post-rock work might offer with all eight of these expansive tracks reaching for something much bigger with so much more ambition, and it be an outright insult to even insinuate that Give Up To Failure didn’t deliver here in any way. The true burden of “Burden” is to pick out what you like out of it the most since, if you let it envelope you properly, there is so much mastery being thrown around in every minute that it gives me goosebumps just listening to it, and if that’s not a sure fire sign that Give Up To Failure has crafted something undoubtedly special with this release on a scale that is far to delicious to ignore, downplay, or put off. The whole record pulls you down into the band’s unique world of darkness that’s not so much as suffocating as all-enveloping in its nature as it rarely feels hostile, but definitely pained as Give Up To Failure has great emotion throughout every piece given to us and there isn’t a single one of them that couldn’t stand proudly on their own as a testament of what this band is really capable of. To fall into “Burden” and really absorb what all it has to offer to experience something on a higher plane for post-rock and beyond with me only hoping to hear more in the near future.

The idea of experimentation is far from uncommon especially when the material is even slightly of the atmospheric variety, but to come across something like this and come out of the album with such exceptional quality the likes of which is an at a tremendous high with “Burden”. In every sense, Give Up To Failure has achieved their own in every single sense to the highest degree and they should be extremely proud of what has been achieved.

LISTEN to “Burden” on Bandcamp here.

LIKE Give Up To Failure on Facebook here.