Demo II

If anybody ever asks you why Bone Awl should exist, answer that one of their songs gave a name and a face to this band right here. You don't even have to actually like Bone Awl. I don't think anybody really does (I personally only like a single demo by them out of what I've heard - the other stuff usually has too dinky of a guitar tone or strange mixing or some other odd blunder), they all just kind of pretend to because Bone Awl are a band with an aesthetic worth pretending to like. But now, two or three years in the wake of their prime, you have an actual reason to! The band have decidedly left their mark of influence, and now you can see quite a few little projects sprout up and pick up where they left off, borrowing the sprinklings of rage and anger that Bone Awl always reveled in with their mix of black metal and vicious punk, and turning them up to 11, creating a breed of music almost alien in its anger. The zenith of these little projects, by far, is Black Beasts, a band who seemingly absorbed the essence of Bone Awl, grabbed a similar strange aesthetic, and just ran with it. This release right here, their second demo, is the critical point, the place where every idea comes to fruition with deadly efficiency.

Don't get me wrong, Bone Awl were always an angry outfit. They are not black metal for people who prefer the genre when it clings to pretty complex chords and generates imagery of northern mountain ranges and cold forests. Nevertheless, I like to think Bone Awl's members would listen to Black Beasts and immediately respond with something like "Whoa, man, calm the fuck down, there's no need to be like that, take a deep breath and count to 10". Black Beasts' second demo is easily some of the most hateful music ever conceived by mankind - a mere eight minutes of pure belligerence, malice, absolute disgust for everything. If you've heard any of the bands in this spectrum, you know the basics of what to expect: heavy, catchy, ballistic riffage with an extremely raw finish to top things off. The chords are simplistic and straightforward, based around half-steps and dread-inducing progressions; the songs all fixate on a single tempo throughout their one- or two-minute running time; and the guitar tone is drenched in feedback to the point where every song begins and ends with the raw screech of unmitigated distortion. Those are the average traits, the elements that one can reasonably expect most bands of this movement to possess. But they're not what distinguishes Black Beasts from any of their contemporaries on a qualitative level.

No, what distinguishes Black Beasts is that every element of their presentation is fine-tuned not to sound cool, not to make good songs from a writing standpoint (though that happens inadvertently, of course), but to express hatred in a manner so potent that it can almost be felt. On this demo, at least, the band have two different moods that they juggle between throughout the release: no-holds-barred, ridiculously absurd thrashing, and slower, slightly more restrained pieces which drip with a boldness that could almost be interpreted as braggadocio. On second thought, it's somewhat misleading to say that the band "juggle" between them. There's a lot less variation than that might imply - as previously stated, every song picks a handful of riffs and sticks with them until the bloody end. But the songs are concise enough to the point where it's not an issue whatsoever, and in fact it contributes a lot to the overall atmosphere of the music - but I'll get to that shortly. The first, second and fourth songs are the faster ones on the album, and are my personal favorites on the release. Black Beasts are practically unstoppable once they reach these points - as soon as one of these songs starts, the guitars hunker down. The drums revert to a nearly-inaudible state where essentially only the kick is clearly heard, forming a rhythm that pulses like a heartbeat reaching its physical thresholds. The vocals scream so fiercely that they could be easily mistaken for static, less speaking words in any language and more channeling raw spite into phonemes. It's an utterly fascinating display if ever there was one. The point seems to be hammered in with the end of the fourth song, where the drum beat keeps playing after the guitars have reverted back to feedback, almost like an animalistic frenzy of violence persists even after its perpetrator has been mortally wounded. There are plenty of other notable moments as well, like the second track (my personal favorite), which starts with a buzz not unlike a malfunctioning air conditioner and then bursts into an inhuman display of malevolence. Or the first track, which might be the fastest of the bunch, exploding right out of the starting gate with an astonishing, blistering riff and assuring the listener that the band mean business.

Black Beasts' slower songs don't demonstrate quite as much of a relentless, unstoppable fervor, but they have a unique approach of their own which is almost as worthwhile (and ridiculously great, by any means). They tend to focus a bit more on the riffs as opposed to just attempting to drown you in the weight of their compositions, and tend to display a bit more self-awareness as a result. And the band's riffing is consistently excellent, mind you, in all aspects. Catchy, memorable, heavy as the most desolate pit of hell, and able to inflict that much hell upon the listener when need be. The two slower songs (which are only marginally longer than the faster ones) are comparatively calmed enough that the band's excellence at rhythm shows, and the compositions almost take on a sort of bounce. But the change in mood for these songs is certainly interesting - almost like a display of pride, a declaration of something along the lines of "I have the motivations and the means to destroy you, and in just a few moments, I will. Laugh with me before I erase your existence!" And by god, does it work. When the shift from the third song to the fourth occurs, you can almost feel the band shifting gears as the anger reverts from simmering into screaming. The fifth song is essentially just hammering the point in after all is said and done, a final triumphant reminder that the band have broken you down to nothing in a mere eight minutes.

I think the real reason this is so successful at capturing its mood is because of how perfectly single-minded it's been designed to be. Black Beasts find a couple of riffs, designate them to be used for the song, and fixate on them in a way that barely seems like conscious thought, similar to an adrenaline-fueled fight-or-flight response where "fight" has predominated by a mile. Like a crime of passion where the assailant hacks again and again at a face that hardly even exists anymore, there's a distinct vibe of the band switching to autopilot and letting instinct dictate their actions until they spiral out of control. And once all the instruments are involved, the whole display is so uniquely feral and subconscious that it becomes equal parts music and emotion. This is quite possibly a more accurate audial representation of hatred than has ever been conceived before. For that alone, I can easily call this one of my favorite black metal demos of all time - but if that's not enough to convince you of Black Beasts' genius, rest assured that, yes, the riffs are absurdly good and the songwriting is memorable and everything you could really want out of this is right here. Just keep in mind that once you hear this project in action, little things like the music's composition won't especially matter.