Between Forever... and the End

Upon my first time listening to this album, as with every time I listened to it after that, I wanted to like this album. The concept of the album, and the idea of the music seems great, but when you actually get down to it, there is a lot of imperfections and some at times, there is blatant sloppiness. But put that aside, and you actually have some skilled musicianship going on here. The songs have very strong construction and hardly have you feel disappointed. Hemotoxin's "Between Forever...And The End" may not be the cleanest album in the world, but it is definitely a must-hear for fans of everything from thrash metal, death metal, and any progressive metal fan. Especially considering that they combine each of those genres together. I wouldn't go so far as to say that this is a masterpiece of material, but it is definitely something to respect and consider a part of your CD collection. Then again, you gotta cut them some slack for this album's imperfections because this is the case for most bands, where their earliest stuff isn't their cleanest.

I can assure you that when you play this album, it will be something new for your ears, although it may take some getting used to. There are some pretty great tracks on here that pull the album together very well. Michael Chavez's vocals are a little different than what you might expect from a death/thrash vocalist, but hey, it fits. I enjoy listening to this album because they have very interesting parts that sound pretty dark at times, just like on the song "Aberrant" there is a dark melody that I really enjoy that kicks in at around the 1:39 mark. This is an example of what I mean by there is some sloppiness on this album, but there is good songwriting. The sound on this album could be closely related to that of Death's later material. I would say it's heavily influenced by possibly Death's "Human" or even "Symbolic," but that's not really up to me to decide. And as for the production of the album, I find it to have a sort of "organic" sound. It's not overly-produced, and it's definitely not shitty. I think that the guitar sound could be a little more bigger and less thin sounding, but again, that's just my opinion, take it as you will. They make up for this with devious melodies and harmonies and screaming solos accompanied by furious drumming that is just absolutely all over the place. Another interesting part about this album is that fact that because it wasn't perfect, it got me interested in hearing a possibly better release. I think that this band definitely is going places with this material, but not right away with this album. It's a great step forward, but it's definitely not the best. If it were me, there were some parts on this album I would have completely redone, but that's just me. I would recommend this to many of my friends because it's palate cleanser. It's a step away from what's going on right now in the music scene, or at least what was going on in the music scene in 2013.

Looking back on this album, I have come to respect it's mark as the bands first release. My favorite aspect of this album is its originality. There aren't many bands that are doing the same thing that Hemotoxin is doing right here on "Between Forever...And The End." Where it lacks the tightness in its construction, it compensates with it's unique style. To me, this is a definite foreshadowing of something better to come. I wouldn't pass up the opportunity to listen to this if it were my first time, so neither should anyone else for that matter.