By Monk and The Dark Queen
We first came across Beyond The Beneath when bassist Davy Greer was recruited into the ranks of the now temporarily dormant Baleful Creed. BTB continued to play a handful of occasional gigs, but these become fewer and more distantly apart as Greer’s new commitment took prominence. We all knew that there were some recordings lurking in the background, but these never saw the light of day, until recently, when Greer, at a loose end because of BC’s continued hiatus, dug around in his musical basement, dusted down the tapes, added a few finishing touches and decided to see what interest remained in them…
The incandescent intro to ‘Falling Stars’ leads into a crushing bass line and tribal drums that continue through out this album: Greer’s bass lines are deep, rich and sonorous, joining Badger Duncan’s dominant but never domineering drums in driving each of the nine songs with the intensity of horses galloping along a rain-drenched beach, Colum ‘Spaceman’ Gallagher’s machine gun guitars keeping you under a constant barrage of incessant fire while you follow a lycan into the depths of hell and beyond.
The title track is definitely one of the standouts, an epic slice of doomy thrash, or thrashy doom depending upon your perspective, while the likes of ‘War N Peace’, ‘Kill The King’, the party-on-down anthemic of ‘Gotten’ and the suitably frenetic ‘One Shot One Kill’ clearly state the band’s desire to take no prisoners and take no mercy in their uncompromising approach to delivering their brand of metallic groove with aplomb and intent.
To finish with DQ’s words: this musical journey is well worth a trip to take and retake again and again.
As intimated above, ‘Borderlands’ was released as both a labour of love, a case of finishing long-dormant business, and a case of curiosity, to see what other musical archaeologists would be interested in reviving these long lost archival recordings. Such as been the interest that not only have the CDs now virtually sold out but the band are talking about doing a second album – and maybe even returning to live action. So, it seems we may be retracing our steps fairly soon…
- ‘Borderlands’ is out now.
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