Review Summary: Beneath The Massacre prove once again that they are good at playing fast and nothing else.
Harder. Faster. Louder. To many these words are the true embodiment of the spirit of metal. But at what point do they turn from mantra to annoyance? Over the course of the last four years Beneath The Massacre, along with bands like the equally offending Brain Drill, have pushed technicality into the realms of the unlistenable and with their newest release
Dystopia they continue the trend.
Much like their prior work,
Dystopia acts as a showcase for the band's technical prowess. Every song on the album is a cut and paste job of lightning fast riffing, triggered to hell blast beats and the occasional breakdown. Nothing more, nothing less. It seems that after three releases Beneath the Massacre still havent learned that while shred is great, one cannot live on shred alone. Its almost as though sometime in between writing the tweedle-tweedle-tweedle and the dun-dun-dun they forgot that they were supposed to be writing actual songs. Sure the music is downright impressive when taken from a purely technical standpoint, but when probed for substance it just comes up empty.
Dystopia exposes Beneath the Massacre for the one-trick-pony that they are. Beyond that, its emphasis on masturbatory technicality over songwriting makes it nothing more than a haphazard collection of riffs. And while
Dystopia will hit the spot if you are in dire need of your tech-metal fix, you'll be hard pressed to remember anything after its 32 minute playing time besides that it was really ***ing fast.
