Benea Reach
Monument Bineothan
6.3
Here’s another one of those ‘odd’ Candlelight USA releases (i.e., Trendkill, She Said Destroy, Diskreet, Dead Man In Reno, Of Graves and God) that, while a quality album, doesn’t seem to go in hand with the label's generally ‘blacker’ mantra and seems more directed at the state and flux of current metal than sheer quality.
Hailing from Norway, Benea Reach, who feature former Extol guitarist Christer Espevoll, play a form of progressive, modern, angular and at times, expansive post rock/hardcore metal. Part Meshuggah, part Cult of Luna part Mastodon, the mix is at times, impressive, but at other times a bit transparent and overdrawn.
Lurching, staggering riffs over tumbling drums and high pitched screams and the occasional introspective segue and clean vocal injection linger for lengthy songs and a lengthy album. At times, Monument Bineothan is a pretty huge slab of darkly seething, brooding post rock, as tracks like “Transmitter”, “Pandemonium”, shimmering “Emperor” and hefty “Immaculate’ heave and shudder with an elite sense of genre specifics and tempos. Then at times, it just plain bores me with hollow A Life Once Lost mechanics (“Purge”, “River”, “Torch”, “Conflux”) or aimless wandering (the overdrawn 12 minute “Venerate” and closing instrumental “Drapery”).
Even with a nice stern production and a few moments of atonal heft, with this spring seeing so many high profile metal releases (If I have to tell you what ones, you shouldn’t be at this site), and on record label littered with legends and black metal heavy hitters (Candlelight USA has hardly promoted this release at all), I don’t see Benea Reach making much of an impact on the genre outside of Oslo.
