I think this album has some good ideas on it, and a few totally killer tracks like, Slice Where You Live Like Pie, and Delivering Groceries at 128BPM. But is one of the more sloppy recordings of Drummer Damon Che and fails to fully solidify. It is however a nice precursor to American Don, which is the sound they were going for on this album, only solidified.
Overall, its not bad.

but realizing that it doesn't matter.
I'm just going to add to the hyperbole here and write that What Burns...
is one of the best "rock" albums I have ever heard or ever will hear. Simply otherworldly, as if aliens heard snippets of earthly music on their way through the interstellar spaces and decided to make something in response to the fragments they captured.
Be warned though, if you're not prepared to interact with the music, you'll be in for some frustration: this is not an album that gives up its secrets willingly or easily.
The prototypical Don Cab elements are here, tapped inerlocking guitars, rock solid bass, and fluid/spastic drumming, but they have evolved. Williams and Banfield play more fragile, shimmering lines here, reminiscent of The Belew/Fripp sound in 8o's King Crimson, and as if they are teasing out the history of rock licks through some alien filtering process. Pat Morris locks in with Damon Che more frequently, but does get to play some fat, funky(?)patterns. Damon Che is the octopus, but his sound is drier, focused, and more integrated than in previous efforts.
Album opener "Don Cab 3" starts out with the same drum line that ends II and rides it into an epic that shifts from abstract soundscape to bass heavy groovefest. Along with "Slice where you live like pie", and "The world in perforated lines", easily the album's highlights. Keep in mind, that is a relative statement, as the entire album is like a hologram, where the whole can be teased out of any portion, and you may find yourself loving something completely different the next time you hear it.
"June is finally here" is probably as close to a straightforward song on the album, riding alternating swaths of dissonance and beauty to a thoroughly satisfying conclusion, sounding like every summer you've ever run through, wishing it would never end.
So, in conclusion, buy this album, but only if you've heard For respect or II. Going into this album without reference might turn you off to its charms, and that would be a tragedy.

....but this album finds the most middle ground in their evolution from almost metal, to almost alien dream sountrack music. Right in the middle is "What Burns never returns" All Music guide said "it could most definitely alter the way you think about music forever", and if you've actually heard this album then chances are it did. Don Caballero represent a kind of High Water Mark for progressive (NOT in the 70's, Jethro Tull sense)and complex instrumental music and have been imitated by many but copied by none. One of the first things you notice about Don Caballero is the drumming, executed by one Damon Che, who is arguably the best drummer this side of jazz greats like Max Roach, and his style does resemble a kind of deconstructed jazz in ideology, though not at all in attack. Earlier efforts found him simply overriding the fractured metal guitar lines that sounded as if they were simply trying to keep up, but here they battle it out on a more "intellectual" front, if you'll pardon the expression, and often provide a striking counter point to what the drums and bass are doing. More than once during the course of the album, the drums and bass launch into a new passage behind guitars that pretend to miss their cue, only to fall back again into the original groove. This may sound chaotic, and it is, but it's performed with such intricate beauty and attention to detail. One might be surprised to find that the whole operation is obsessively organized and preplanned. This just makes for music that is unlike anything you are bound to hear elsewhere. It's deconstructed rock music like nothing else, constantly falling apart and reorganizing itself to meet greater heights with each successive passage. Don Caballero prove that they have an innate understanding of the relationship between the brain and the ear, and they know just how to manipulate that relationship to a startling effect. They manage to lull you while landing perfectly placed jabs right where you want to be hit. Beautiful. Jarring. Complex. Unbelievable.

Every now & then, infact not very often (and even less it seems in todays overblown gimmick glamour driven pop pseudo music world)
a band comes along. A band that carries none of that stigma or none of those cliches.
A band that have their own sound and own voice which sounds totally organic & hits you so deeply that you cannot describe.
Don Cab for me are one those bands. The music on What Burns Never Returns sounds like nothing you have ever heard.
Don Cab would have to be one of the most under-rated & yet highly influential groups to ever play. Many instrumental bands were spawned in their wake but none ever came close to capturing the brilliance of the Don.
This kind of music is obviously only going to appeal to and affect a relitively small number of people.
If you are looking for something to test your imigantion, take you to places that you have never been before, forget everything and get so drawn into the music that nothing else really seems to matter and if you are looking for an album that can be re-visited an infinite ammount of times without ever getting boring or losing appeal then this is it.
This is definitely not music to get a party started.
This in my opinion is timeless music, music in it's purest form of human expression which can be totally beautiful & so inspiring
then without giving you an ounce of warning it will hit you straight in the guts while simultaneously tearing out your heart. Don Cab really did have it all.
What Burns Never Returns probably won't suck you in straight away and perhaps for respect might be a better starting point for most new comers.
You will still be un-locking all sorts of things even after several listens with this cd.
As opposed to say for respect, which is more of a straight up rock affair (but not in the cliched way that we know) the songs on What burns are longer & more drawn out, giving them more time to grow and take shape.
Hence it usually feels like you are listening to about 5 songs in any one song. They just manage to take on so many different atmospheres & evoke so many different moods, ever changing and always with a consistent flow.
Extremely crisp inter woven guitar work with constant mind blowing drum patterns grooving all around the songs by Damon Che & bass that is always hovering around, but never taking the lime light yet still adding to the mood.
The album finishes on such a positive note with the epic june is finally here which just totally erupts into a joyous spasmic cosmic orgy for the ears at around the 3:16 mark.
I can only hope that more people will continue to discover this album/band and that the music can affect them in the same way that it has for me.
In the end that's what listening to good music is all about. Dare to totally blow your mind and listen to some of the most alien amazing music ever created and buy this cd.

This may be the weakest of Don Caballero's releases, but it still blows away almost any other band's best effort. Any Don Cab fan will not want to miss this, as it contains plenty of great instrumental math rock, and in some ways represents their most insane and advanced accomplishment. They never defied conventional rhythm, melody and harmony as radically as they did on this record.

The album starts off - literally - where Don Caballero 2 ended; the same killer drum groove that ended their second album starts the first track here, the amusingly titled "Don Caballero 3." But if you thought the second album played fast and loose with structure, wait till you hear this! It may sound like like completely random noodling, but I saw them play live on the "What Burns..." tour, and they played almost all of this album including the first track, and it sounded exactly like the album - what appears to be random noodling is in fact carefully orchestrated. Utterly mind-blowing.

The closest you get to a completely structured track is probably track 3: "Delivering the Groceries at 138 Beats per Minute." But even here, "structure" is a relative term - they can't resist a breakdown and major musical shift halfway through. At any rate, you get some killer grooves and some nice meter changes. The closer, "June is Finally Here" contains what may be the band's most beautiful moment: pure shimmering guitars abandon any trace of dissonance for a glorious conclusion to a jarring, stunning album.

And of course, the biggest attraction remains drummer Damon Che - aptly credited on this album as "octopus." Play the opening to track 4, "Slice Where You Live Like Pie" and know that here is one man who clearly has achieved complete independence of all four of his limbs.

Overall, not the band's best work. But still worth owning for any true fan of adventurous, challenging music.