Following the release of their new record Ghost Palace, we’re thrilled to welcome back our beloved Canadian diamonds The Burning Hell on August 28th!
Mathias and Ariel have brought unrivalled joy to our town for an entire decade now, with each show leaving lasting memories. They create an amazing world of tunes and tales: the ideal escape from reality to keep us going…
“…funny, sardonic, and literate. Add in a new-wavey, Loaded-era VU sensibility, and it’s impossible not to be swayed by these acerbically funny story songs” – MOJO
The Burning Hell is the ongoing musical project of songwriter Mathias Kom and multi-instrumentalist Ariel Sharratt, often including additional comrades and collaborators. Their densely populated genre-shifting songs are packed with an abundance of literary, historical, 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 mutually created, ever surprising, and even occasionally beautiful world. Which is to say they’re good dance partners and they want to dance with you.
Now based in the woods of rural Prince Edward Island, The Burning Hell has 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 delivered by way of killer tunes and joyful live performances.
When Mathias and Ariel aren’t on the road or in the studio with the band, they pursue art projects at the intersection of ecology and sound with their collective Idlefield Art Lab. Recent ventures have included mobile, solar-powered recording studios in Scotland and Canada, and off-grid recording projects in abandoned farms and lighthouses.
“The Burning Hell are a band that hit you first in the heart, then the head, then the funny bone. Most bands would be happy with just grazing one of the three” – Joyzine
“I can think of few songwriters I’d rather spend the apocalypse with” – Folk Radio
“Maybe The Burning Hell won’t be for everyone – I don’t think they’d even want to be for everyone – but if you like brilliant, thought-provoking lyrics, superb musicianship and killer tunes, you know what… you might just love this too” – Americana
