Beyond Cops. Beyond God.

This cancerous band is STILL making records. You do have to have sympathy for them, perhaps even you have to tip your hat to them slightly: not only are they terrible and have released nothing but horrible material for a number of reasons, not only has the band tried to style itself around the image of the New York street thug and simultaneously couple that with their tired brand of mindless deathcore nonsense, but it seems EVERYONE has picked up on it, and they have thus become the metal scene’s pet hate, being subject to some truly scathing reviews and the whole encyclopaedia of dismissive insults that came with them.

But, in the face of all this, they are back with a second full length, ‘Beyond Cops, Beyond God’, for everybody to laugh at and then permanently ignore. How does this CD embarrass the band this time around? Well, less so than you might actually want it to, in begrudging fairness. It is horrendously boring though, the lack of ideas on display is shocking, at least their first full length didn’t exactly feel like a bid to be taken seriously, whereas this release feels as though it was at least written with some sense of direction and group cohesion.

The songwriting will teach nothing to anyone, no one should take the remotest bit of influence from this band at all in any department, but some of the grooves manage to surprise the listener on occasion, especially when you remind yourself that you are listening to Waking the Cadaver. The opening and ending riffs to ‘Sadistic Tortures’ briefly captures the attention, as does the middle riff of ‘Made in Hell’, for example. Not because they inherently contain anything of particular worth, but just because you are surprised that it was Waking the Cadaver that came up with them. Also, some awareness of other musical styles can be felt on this CD: ‘Terminate with Extreme Prejudice’ has a slightly thrashy feel about it, whilst ‘Reign Supreme’ is a bit groovier in its approach. And it is a welcome indication of growth; so accustomed are we to the lack of vision of this band that when something that isn’t worthy of immediate dismissal comes along, then you at least feel invited to award them some merit for finally sounding like an actual band, and there are indeed a few moments like this on ‘Beyond Cops, Beyond God’.

But ultimately, who fucking cares? Every department still needs some major work done to it. I am still yet to hear some evidence of a bass player on any of their recorded material, it’s almost as though they are deliberately excluding him from the mix. The vocals are still going to be the main target area for most people, because even though the days of ‘bree bree shredded wheat’ are thankfully behind us (most lyrics are actually audible this time around) the part-hardcore-part-death growls are still horribly inconsistent, but when you have lines like ‘kiss your ass goodbye’, ‘face down in the john is where you belong’ and ‘Go internet fagit, cry’ then no amount of sleek performance will help the vocal department get taken any more seriously.

And of course, the mosh-friendly, groan inducing slam sections on every song that not only reduce the rest of the music to a pointless earache, but serve as a reminder that this band are nowhere near where they need to be in order to warrant any degree of praise from the metal community. Basically, the review is this; there is no change to what is happening here fundamentally, and the changes that have been made are too small for you to even bother about. They aren’t even much comedy value anymore seeing as they have made a half assed bid to be taken seriously, therefore removing any degree of interest anyone may have had the development of this band entirely. Ignore this CD completely, there’s nothing to see here. At all.