Burn Rodeo is a great name. Once you here a name like that – you cheer up at the realization that you’re not the only one who hates all that pretentious crap L.A. forces people to reckon with.
Sadly, the band didn’t add to the good humor. These guys, consisting of a vocalist, lead, rhythm, bass, and drummer, got on stage and looked like young fawns caught in the headlights. Once on stage, eye contact with crowd seemed almost painful, and with the exception of the overly-enthusiastic bass, every single member refused to perform.

The image of the band was themed around ball caps, plugs, and the color black, which is cool, but it didn’t really match the music which ranged from emo-metal to beachy reggae. The first song began with a blood curdling wail by the lead that led right into the metal part of the show. The vocalist repeatedly strained every note to sound distorted and horrific, but then would randomly begin sweetly singing. It provided a constant sense of wonderment, but at the same time, it had no flow, no transition and sounded just plain messy.

The second song was good. It was completely reggae, and the leap made from the first song to the second made a member of the audience declare, “They’re like Incubus.” I could see the likening, but by the third song – comparing them to Incubus had become a stretch. The chords became almost digitized, and I entered into Nintendo land. The screeching persisted, and so did the kinda-sorta metal theme, although the tempo left me constantly confused. From marching band cadences to rollicking tumbles and rolling cascades, then to light tapping – my head could never find the beat to bob to.

To make it all worse, The Office’s sound system blurred the vocalist’s lyrics into indistinguishable rubbish. After song three, he had completely given up and decided it best to perform the rest of the show with his back to the crowd. This was probably the worst decision of the night. Any personality he could have used to boost the band’s overall performance was eliminated, and the crowd was left to watch the rest of the band, who was in turn, watching the ground.

Burn Rodeo seemed new to the whole scene. With a little more experience and maybe a little more focus on what kind of music they really want to play – they could improve. As of now, they don’t have an image, or a genre, or a stage presence. But they do have tomorrow, and it can only go up from there.