This is hard-driving, aggressive rock. However, the obsession with the romance culture caused the reviewer to come to this differentiation between pop and grunge/metal/punk rock: in pop people make money with simple to non-existent sounds that focus on the harmony of humyn romance relations, while in hard rock, the emphasis is on the negative aspects of life.
Yes, Finch uses a lot more electricity than say Mariah Carey with her tap-the-drum-and-cymbal background instrumentation. On the other hand, they both have the same focus, subject-wise, with Finch covering the painful side of romance.
Almost all 13 songs are about losing love and realizing the importance of the lost love. There is nothing positive in the songs, not even a lesson learned.
There's really no way around putting a limit on romance culture to be connected to the rest of the world. Painful loss of love can be a never-ending whirlpool or one in pain can realize things about social relations and reconnect with the outside world. There are no other choices and Finch does nothing to give us an insight into anything other than obsessing about a particular lost love.
We at MIM do not believe that individuals are destined "in the stars" to love only one persyn. In fact, we believe that love of two to the exclusion of the rest of the world is anti-social and a cause in itself of much social illness.
In this, although Finch is far from pop, the songs on "What It Is To Burn" are almost formulaic in being the flip-side of silly-love-song-pop. For every persyn who manages to find the happy-go-lucky-love, there are probably three who suffer what Finch is talking about. We can choose to dwell on the negative, or just as stupidly, we can choose to dwell on optimistic sappy love songs, but either way we are making a mistake in music.
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