Art in the Eyes of the Beholder

Laying somewhere between Converge-style metalcore and that sort of techy deathcore that was trying to make the rounds in the very-late-2000s, This Side of the Massacre dropped Art in the Eyes of the Beholder onto an unsuspecting mass and then just… disappeared, somewhere beneath the massacre. Perhaps it’s because deathcore, Necrophagist-esque tech death and the like had worn out their welcome by 2011, or maybe these guys just didn’t get the exposure that they could’ve given the album’s independent release – who knows? Fuck knows, but anyway, these guys put together some respectable core with quite a bit of gusto.

You know what, let’s address the elephant in the room… “Nervosa Diathetic: Part 2”. It’s got this vaguely dreary riff playing throughout, and the solos that come about are as drudging as the riff, thus amplifying the mood. The problem is that it’s 16 fucking minutes long! I remember looking up how long it’d been going through because it had been dragging on for so long, and it only hit the 5-minute mark. Like… do you think that’s enough? It just keeps going and going and going! It never ends! Every other song on this album is like 3 or 4 minutes a piece, and here’s this bloated corpse of a song that drags its feet and perpetually dilutes its atmosphere as it hardly deviates throughout – and that’s only on the grounds that at least the solos change a few notes! If the score up above seems a bit low, well, blame this slog-- I mean song for that, because this underdeveloped behemoth kills the momentum set by the rest of the album up to that point.

That aside, I mean, you like fast Slaughter of the Soul-esque riffing, Converge-style breakdowns and generally hard-hitting atonal riffing, solos shredding like Malmsteen on bathsalts and some inexplicable jazzy breakdowns that heavily contrast with the heavy music being played? Then hop in because that’s exactly what you’re getting! Sure, song structure is only a suggestion to these guys as they go between breakdowns, those mid-paced riffs, fast melodeath-y riffs and solos in a vaguely coherent matter. But in a lot of the more hardcore and less poppy styles, anarchy and chaos reign supreme!

As such, the songs on Art in the Eyes of the Beholder have kind of a “best of all worlds” approach. It doesn’t quite ride on a groove long enough to make too much of an impact, the faster bits aren’t as hooky as their contemporaries (particularly The Black Dahlia Murder), the breakdowns aren’t too far from what the old 90s metalcore guys were doing, and – while they are quite good – solos have always been an ancillary element that ices the cake so to speak. In short, not a ton stands out beyond the sheer virtuosity of the solos and even some of the riffs at times. Not just the fast ones, either. Beyond that, it does ride many of the waves you’d expect from these kinds of bands. But man, when they put these elements together the way that they did here, there’s a ton of energy and spark that’s put into what’s some right abrasive music. The overall arrangements themselves – the overall interplay between the different tempos and what have you – have that vim and vigor to them too; it just seems like it rides on something just long enough before changing it up, but without being predictable. From there, it becomes a ride in and of itself to go through. Even down to the finale that opts for a more contemplative, reflective composition. That solo might’ve been intended as the closer of the album, but given it’s been 11 years since any kind of follow-up has materialized and have been broken up for quite a while now, it’s found itself as more of a heartfelt goodbye from the band itself.

Well, this has certainly been a journey. At its core, it’s basically a deathcore album (perhaps one of those token really good deathcore albums that transcends the usual) with a ton of moving parts that are reminiscent of many -core acts of old and even some of the slightly older chaps. Interestingly, it’d be nothing flash beyond their virtuosic playing... if not for their sheer energy and kinetic song structuring. It goes from fine to compelling pretty quickly and hardly lets go. Yeah, then there’s this 16-minute snorefest in the middle of the album and it’s one that goes from atmospheric to boring to momentum-killing and then to another reason the skip button was invented. So without that, pretty good, even borderline great album; with it, though…

...still good but could’ve done with a trim. Like, the kind of trim Robin Williams’ character in Jumanji got.