I admit the picture of the two guitarists on the back of this
\nrelease in leather and spikes made me leery of putting this release
\nin my CD player. I had visions of a terrible Judas Priest cock-rock
\nband trying to recapture their youth.<\/p>\n
Disappointment is a blessing. This is a five song blitz of 20:00
\nthat has me still picking up my jaw.<\/p>\n
This release starts out with “Death Machine,” an aggressive,
\nfast, Pantera-ish “Mouth For War”-like tempo. Then at the 2:50
\nmark, the band changes tempos and plays an interlude, a variation
\nof the melody of the fast section, before building back up to its
\nfrenzy by the 3:30 mark. But it is in that 30-plus seconds that
\nFrom Beyond made their mark in my mind. Typically, a lesser band
\nwould have played fast for the entire song and not shown that they
\nhave a sense of musicianship. At the 4:46 mark, the band launches
\ninto a syncopated section, typical of thrash bands, but it is
\nimmediately preceded by some slick hi-hat work. “Death Machine” is
\nthe right foundation to start building this release upon. It is a
\nstrong opening track.<\/p>\n
So after 6:37, you get to the rest of this CD, which consists of
\n3 tracks of similar style to track one. The difference I hear in
\nthis band, that makes them stand out, is that they sound like they
\nhave musical training. They have a sense of phrasing their riffs so
\nthat it sounds pleasing to the ear.<\/p>\n
They are able to expand the thrash genre, not just paying homage
\nto bands like Exodus or Testament here. There are individual
\ncharacteristics of this band that make them stand out. The drummer
\ndoesn’t rely on a rumbling of double-bass to establish his sound.
\nThe guitarists work together and sound like they actually composed
\ntheir parts instead of flying-by-the-seat-of-their-pants. The
\nvocalist, while not really ‘singing’ all the time, is not annoying.
\nAnd that’s enough for me.<\/p>\n
The last track is a short 1:31 acoustic track, called
\n“Epilogue.” I have a problem with thrash and rock bands including
\nshort acoustic tracks at the end of their releases because they
\nseem tacked on and presented as evidence that the guitarist has
\nsome skill. Some bands, like Disarray’s “Life is Gone” are
\nsuccessful because they carry forward the theme of their CD into a
\ndifferent ‘voice’ (the acoustic guitar).<\/p>\n
I’ve heard a lot of these short metal band promos. I have to say
\nthat this From Beyond release stands out with my other favorite
\nshort metal band promos like Grain and the Gooseflesh EP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":26333,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6824],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-37562","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-from-beyond","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37562"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}