Band's List Death Metal The Beyond (ITA) Decaying Death

From Trenton, Italy emerges a new specimen of death metal known as The Beyond. Formed in 2011, this quintet is off to deliver pure, brutal, and nasty death metal for listeners to gorge in. This journey would start off with their debut EP from 2013, simply known as “Decaying Death.” An album constructed of four tracks, this release does have its issues, but still holds some great potential for these newcomers.

The musicianship, for a start, is played out well. The vocals are one of the greater highlights of “Decaying Death” as a whole, in how sludgy, raw and whole-bodied they sound. In fact, this is to the point where the vocalist sounds more like a creature than a musician, which adds more to the album’s vile tone. Along with that, the instrumentation is also performed well. The guitars play robustly gruesome riffs that definitely would appeal to the old-school crowd of death metal, almost giving off a doom-metal vibe to the album’s metallic assault. As for the drums, while they are played off decently, this is the particular area where the production has its shortcomings.

In fact, the production and mixing is unfortunately the record’s most cumbersome problem, and it’s entirely prominent in the music’s percussion. There are times where the base drum sounds too quiet, and is drowned out by the rest of the music. Other times, the cymbals will be a little too silent as well. While with the vocals and guitars, the mixing fares well in terms of rawness, boldness, and atmosphere, it sadly does not seem to do the same for the drumming. It results in becoming a rather large distraction. While the musical performance itself is solid, the mixing woefully does not seem to help matters any.

“Decaying Death” is an EP entirely composed of raw and gritty old-school death metal, and it is done generally well. The songs are well-written, on top of the very solid musicianship and raw atmosphere. They have great speed, structure, and violence, to the point where old-school death metal fans will really take great, nostalgic pleasure in this throwback of a release. The only real issue with all this is that there is not much inventiveness to be found here for the death metal genre. However, the music is nonetheless enjoyable and decent, with some nasty heaviness and high potential within the album’s tracks.

Overall, “Decaying Death” is a decent dose of death metal. The mixing of the drums, as stated earlier, is where the album suffers the most. But even so, there are enough positive factors to make the record nonetheless pleasurable. The musicianship is very well done, especially the vocals. The metal itself is nicely brutal and solidly composed, and it also holds some nice, thick atmosphere for listeners to become engaged to. Despite its flaws, this EP is nonetheless a fine specimen of old-school death metal that would make a great welcome for newcomers of the genre.


Originally posted on: http://metaljerky.blogspot.com/