BENEATH - The Barren Throne

May 28, 2014, 9 years ago

(Unique Leader)

Greg Pratt

Rating: 6.0

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BENEATH - The Barren Throne

Whoa, a label head over at Unique Leader should have shown this Icelandic death metal band where the ol' stop button is in the studio, as their second album goes on for way too long. But despite wearing out its welcome by a good 10 minutes (and with music this dense and heavy, that's make or break), this 52-minute disc does contain lots of great stuff for death metal fans to chew on. From slow crawlers like 'Sky Burial' to tons of rampaging, grinding death, to the occasional groove bit ('Iron Jaw' drops down to damn near deathcore for a moment), it's all here, done with skill, passion, and little to no personality. Despite that, there's good stuff within, you just have to dig a bit: for example, I like 'Storm Drainer''s soaring solo and ambitious reach and the insane drum intro of 'Unearthed', even they both come too late in the album. There's a lot going on here; if Beneath can streamline a bit and make a sharper, more concise album (their last was a more economical 41 minutes; I would have loved to have seen that again) it's going to help them next time around.



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