Unplugged

Beaten to Death are not your typical grindcore band. Hailing from Oslo, the band has proved with their last 2013 release Dødsfest that they can write ferocious slabs of grindcore that color a bit outside the lines of the usually fairly rigid genre. The relentless blastbeats, pig squeal-style vocals and blistering guitars are there, but they’re intermixed with sections of clean, melodic guitars that are reminiscent of post-rock, along with slower, groovier sections where the bass takes center-stage.

Don’t let the name fool you; Unplugged is not an acoustic album. Over the course of 22 minutes, the band mines the sound they’ve developed on previous releases. In other words, if you’ve listened to their earlier records you know what this sounds like, which is fine because no one else sounds quite like these guys do. Perhaps the best song to sum up their ethos is the anthemic “Don’t You Dare to Call us Heavy Metal,” which blasts out of the gate with some tremolo picking and double-bass drum quickly replaced by blasts atop the vocalist’s howls. Then the song turns to a thrash beat with the bassist laying down some groovy lines before the deep end drops out, allowing clean guitars to shimmer atop the drummer’s frenzied blastbeats. The song builds and builds into a post-rock climax when drums drop out, leaving the band members to chant out the track’s title over those melodic guitars until they slam right back into the tremolo-picked assault from the beginning of the song. All in the course of about a minute and a half. The song is a testament to the band’s ability to write a concise, catchy and plain fun song in the grindcore style.

Ultimately it’s that sense of fun that makes Beaten to Death stand out from the rest of the grindcore scene. They’re not afraid to experiment and loosen up a bit, which is refreshing in a scene full of strict traditionalists. Other highlights include “Til himmels (for a gjete gud),” which stomps along on a mid-tempo groove with intermittent stabs of aggression or clean guitars, and “Death to False Grindcore,” which mixes some doom metal-style riffs with something that might not sound out of place on Gorguts’ Obscura, along with a more traditional grindcore attack. The whole album is fairly consistent however, and there isn’t really a dud in the bunch. At 22 minutes I would not have expected anything less.

The songwriting is fairly varied and tries to keep the song structure fresh. To that end no two songs sound exactly alike. That being said the frenzied pace and extremely short songs make the album pass by in a blur, and it can be hard to pick songs apart just from the title.

The playing on this album is fairly typical for grindcore, by which I mean that it’s fairly insane. Props go especially to the drummer Christian “Bartender,” who can blast with the best of them but also shows some looser and more expressive drumming when the songs call for it. The production is crystal-clear for the most part and emphasizes the deep end, another deviation from grindcore.

Overall, this is a great album to check out if you’re looking for some melodic grindcore that tries to do something new.


8/10