"Not many albums open with the line "You were a Nazi hunter..." it's just one notable way in which The Burning Hell's sixth LP (but first in the UK) proclaims its lone wolf conceptions. The band is mostly the product of songwriter Mathias Kom, a mischievous, caustic people's poet with a world view that lets you know the good guys occasionally win. (...)"
- (Andy Fyfe, Q Magazine, UK)
"Kom doesn't try to create moments that are bigger than life. No, he focuses on making life's most basic elements combine in wonderful, magical reactions. Through Kom's eyes, we see life is for the living, not the dreamers. The real rewards come from finding the hidden beauty in what we have, who we are and and who we meet, not in what we desire."
- (Herohill, CA)
ALBUMS
INFO
THE BURNING HELL is the ongoing musical project of songwriter Mathias Kom and multi-instrumentalists Ariel Sharratt and Jake Nicoll, often including additional comrades and collaborators. Their densely populated genre-shifting songs are packed with an abundance of literary, historical, cultural, and pop-cultural forebears, heroes and villains, subjects and objects, stories and hooks.
They move with heavy rhyme and a light step, incorporating a frequent fixation on apocalypse and ruin into work that celebrates participation in a surprising, delightful, and even occasionally beautiful world. Which is to say they’re good dance partners and they want to dance with you.
The Burning Hell are DIY in the best possible sense—underlining the “Do”—their albums and singles manifesting from the edges of the music industry as collaborations with independent labels and publishers, and their years of touring forming connections person by person, show by show, in town after town. They’ve famously ventured to every out-of-the-way island and inland neglected by the less adventurous, emphasizing presence and connection across latitudes, longitudes, and time, affirming a commitment to the political power of sharing music. It is a profoundly optimistic gesture, by way of killer tunes, exuberant hooks, and joyful live performances.
Interview: Mathias Kom about the music that has helped to form his musical identity (for Joyzine UK)
Interview: Mathias Kom on Public Library, this and that (for Musicfix, UK)
"Imagine if you will, Kurt Wagner as a twenty five year old agit-punker and instead of laconic vocal style he’s got so many words and ideas that they spew out of him in a breathless rush, lines running like commuter traffic with barely a gap between them, horns blaring, ideas bleeding into each other. The whole thing hanging together like a cross between performance art and pop music; this is the best way I can conjure up the sound of Mathias Kom and his cohorts. ... As the Hell continue to evolve they push into interesting directions, I’ll be following them."
- (David Cowling / americana-UK on Public Library)
"I just love this. (...) This is one of the freshest, sharpest, hippest, funniest songs that has come our way in a LONG time, and the video matches the record - frame by frame - for its dry, knowing rapid-fire wit.. (...)"
- (Tom Robinson, BBC Introducing / Freshonthenet on Amateur Rappers)
"Lyrics are the thing for Newfoundland-based songwriter Mathias Kom, his sixth album houses some extraordinary stories, not least the word-heavy "Amateur Rappers"...
- (Alastair McKay, UNCUT, UK)
"He's our Randy Newman and Cole Porter rolled into one, with one eye on the coming apocalypse and another on the neck of his ukulele." - (The Globe and Mail, CA)
"what never fails to surprise and delight me is the way songwriter Mathias Kom manages to turn absurdly unwieldy and sesquipedalian verses into the most addictive, accessible, and downright fun songs you could imagine. - (Joel Dear, The Album Wall, UK - "Public Library" his album of the year 2016)
