Album Review: Beneath The Massacre – Fearmonger

Beneath The Massacre are one of those bands for whom having absolutely no chill whatsoever is actually quite endearing. A whopping eight years since 2012’s Incongruous, the Canadian tech-death machine remain an exercise in surgically-precise, noisy brutality.

With lyrical takedowns of capitalism, anti-intellectualism and populism, the passage of time hasn’t dulled the nuclear-hot fire in their bellies, either, and songs like Rise Of The Fearmonger, Autonomous Mind and Bottom Feeders are double-doses of musical fury and head-popping anger. The riffs are satisfyingly complex, and the vocals never get anywhere near clean.

True, it does get a touch one-paced after a while, and the flat production of the relentless double-bass drumming takes away some of their power when they should attack like Animal from The Muppets gone death metal, but like Thy Art Is Murder, there’s something to like in the single-mindedness of BTM’s assault.

Verdict: 3/5