Beyond Fatal
Universal, Diaboloical
5.2
I grabbed this 6 track EP because it was from the label the dropped the amazing I Declare War album, and tagged it as “Brutal Groove Death Metal”. Color me interested.
And to be honest, it starts decently and fits the bill as the EP’s opening title track “Ever Reign” and then “Sorrow Reincarnate” are filled with solid if sloppy mid paced, chunky, down-tuned angular lopes that lie somewhere between deathcore and simple chuggy death metal (i.e. Jungle Rot). The vocals are deep cavernous bellows. “Sorrow Reincarnate” starts to show some cracks and badly placed ambition and ill fated confidence with some oddly placed other worldy solo work, and then from there it just gets worse. Much worse...
The culprit is the terrible clean vocals that arise on “A Breath Upon the Leaves” completely derailing the EP. Why a fairly stout, if unimaginative deathcore band would suddenly inject those vocals into a song is beyond me. They are not The Devil Wears Prada emo bad, but just BAD; semi operatic and dramatic, off key, atonal and just amateurish. Listen, I’m all for expanding your horizons and branching out your style a bit, but for fucks sake at least check with the rest of the band to see if you can actually sing before throwing clean vocals in a promising song.
Then to add insult to injury, there’s a goddamn full on BALLAD next (“For Aria’ s Tears”), complete with piano work and synths and more of the wretched singing-a whole three minutes and forty-three seconds of it. By now, I’m in full on “WTF?” mode and EP closer “Existential Impurity and the Quiescent Death”, while attempting to be epic in scope at nineteen minutes (to their credit, fifteen being actual music and only the last minute is a joke track), those vocals appear nine minutes in, ruining any chance at redemption despite the track’s promising, yet wandering ambition.
Listen, Beyond Fatal, your band has been around since 1998 and has three (albeit obscure) full length albums under your belt, (and while I have not heard any of them, I’ve read reviews and I’m willing to bet there is no clean singing on any of them) don’t force a square peg into a round hole this late in the game guys. Drop the clean vocals, and this is a much better score.
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Beyond FatalSanctuary In Misery
7/8/2002