About 18 months this Danish band was not even on the fringes of my death radar but once my sister said she was coming over from Australia and we planned to go Copenhell in 2017 where they were playing early in the day that all changed and they became an utterly essential band to watch. Formed only three years ago and with only a single demo and an EP “Marie Magdalene” both released during 2016 I gave the EP repeated listens and was completely hooked by their old school death metal demolition.
There’s no trickery to this band, whose name basically translates as Beast, they play rancid guttural deathliness and after watching their incendiary show at Copenhell I knew it wouldn’t be long before a label picked them and lo and behold here we are with their debut, a taster of which was given with opening track “Crosswhore” which had an accompanying video in June of this year. The songs eerie riff and pounding beat is bludgeoned aside for a pulverising double kick that permeates this album from start to finish and had me thinking about all those early Swedeath releases from about 1990 to 1993 which you should know by now.
Whilst this album may be homage to that old school deathly sanctity the band unleashes their own brutal vision of the style that continues with “Hecatomb” a grisly submergence into a world of blasting ferocity. As the track evolves the vocals have an aura of pernicious scorn, a wrathful intent with the fluxing tempo shifting like tectonic plates bridged by effusive lead breaks. My reference to being visionary appears within the title track as an acoustic piece initiates proceedings alongside fire crackles that is almost soporific especially when the solo breezes in wistfully before being swallowed by the metal crashing in unceremoniously with the blast beat rage. What this band does so well is write songs that swerve from one tempo to another with effortless ease as that allows a creepiness in the lead work to feed tendrils of eeriness throughout the track before clawing it back towards the outright vehement velocity.
Stalwarts of the Swedeath scene will no doubt say this song sounds like this band or that band and sure I can do that but that is not the point, this is about authenticity and passion and when you get a track such as “Atra Mors” which makes your skin crawl due to its atmospherics or “Vortex” which is literally pulverising then that is what death metal is about surely. “Vortex” is relentless, it enswarms the listener with an enveloping asphyxiating deathly sensation generated by the drum work but sealed by the unflinching impenetrable guitar riffs that exude throughout the song remorselessly. Closing this monstrous debut is “Ego Te Absolvo”, translates as “I Absolve You” I believe in Latin, a cloying miasmic track initially it has sporadic bursts of speed before nestling itself into a furrow of mid-tempo rancidity. The song has a terror filled atmosphere manifesting through the vocals that seem to come at you from all angles as do the moods within the song which possess doom components and even some blackened aspects towards the end with a shrill like hook that is linked to the echoing vocals creating a haunting ethos making the song a highlight a little different to the rest of the album though no less brutalising.
Every song here has its talons deep within the Scandinavian scene and the band will be first to admit it as this burgeoning outfit hits the scene with an awesome debut of gutturally effective old school death metal.
(9/10 Martin Harris)
https://www.facebook.com/baestband
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