KARMA TO BURN is a three-piece, instrumental Rock band based out of West Virginia, USA. They've been around since 1994, and have had a plethora of EP and full-length releases. Boasting pure and simple, riff-based music to date, they have plenty of fans who like their minimalistic approach. Indeed, they seem to openly shun dynamism, textures, layers or overall wankery, in favor of easy to listen to basic Rock music. "Mountain Czar" is their sixth EP release, and contains five tracks. "Sixty-Two" is the first song on the album. It's a down and dirty, Blues Rock based track, led by one main thunderous riff, and plenty of toms from drummer Evan Divine. There isn't much variation until a riff change somewhere after the mid-way point. Oddly, "Sixty-One" is the second track presented. It's a little faster than the first but just as gritty, and alternates between the E key and A key. Devine's high-hat cymbal has a lot of presence. "Sixty" brings pretty much more of the same. "Jamming" is kept as the main feature as the riff is repeated over and over, seemingly beating you into submission or hypnotizing you into its powers.

"Uccidendo Un Sog" is a peculiar track. It's seems to be a cover of TOM PETTY's "Runnin' Down A Dream," but it's sung in what I believe to be Spanish...either that or the lyrics were just changed. This has to be a tongue-in-cheek sort of ode to this classic song from yesteryear. Closing the album is "Sixty-Three," which begins with a gunfight of sorts through some spoken word, and then a lot of steel guitar from the old west, before the main riff plods in like a lumbering dinosaur on a stroll. I love instrumental music. But my mind is more towards the imaginable. I like changes in meter, changes in sonority, and instrumental prowess. This, by contrast, is no-frills instrumental Rock, like what you might hear in seedy club or biker bar...testosterone laden, hard-driving and punchy sounding. You aren't getting any surprises here in the least. Akin to the early days of a band like BLACK SABBATH, it's bare-bones jeans and t-shirt wearing Hard Rock, that quite frankly doesn't add much to the scene today...but I suppose that is the point and the point is taken