From Beyond

After hearing a lot of good about this album from numerous different sites, friends, etc, I decided to check this out album out. After not having been bothered about this, I never payed much attention to it. Finally after hearing so much talk I decided to give it one last try. Needless to say, that has still not changed my opinion of this highly overrated and boring album.

The album is essentially headed by Death rejects Kam Lee and Rick Rozz and I think that adds to this over-hyped album. "Have you heard Kam Lee and Rick Rozz's band Massacre they formed after they got kicked out of/left Death? The first album, From Beyond, is brutal!!!!" No. This sounds like a poor man's Leprosy mixed with whiffle ball thrash. Some of the riffs...I can honestly say Anthrax is heavier. The guitar tone is weak and thin and doesn't hold any bite or power. The songs are so randomly structured with no real musical sense to the arrangements. "Have this riff here, then follow up with this riff...yeah man that is such a smooth transaction!". The drum sound is flat and the beats are very boring, plain, and standard. There are no real thrills here, just boring cookie cutter riffs.

The album really does just feel like a poor man's Leprosy and they even go as far to kind of rip on one of the riffs in their former band, Death. In "Symbolic Immortality", the first half of that song just sounds like riffs that were not good enough for Leprosy. There are some decent riffs worth a bit of a headbang on the album, but not enough of them and the songs are arranged poorly. The riff at 0:46 seconds of the title track is a great thrashy death riff that would be lethal in a live environment, but the riff just doesn't go on long enough! Again, the riffs in "Cryptic Realms" are also pretty decent, especially the one at 0:38 of the song, however the riff at 1:17 is a clear rip off of the one in "Born Dead" of Death's Leprosy record. That's it, that's literally where the two highlights from this record come from.

To conclude this album is just total...meh. Average, unexciting and boring. AVOID.