CoC : Beyond Terror Beyond Grace - Our Ashes Built Mountains : Review

Beyond Terror Beyond Grace - _Our Ashes Built Mountains_
(Deep Send / Obscene Productions, 2010)
by: Chaim Drishner (6.5 out of 10)

Dubbed as progressive grindcore, Beyond Terror Beyond Grace's latest offering is a tight grinding death metal album with an extremely high production value, packed into 20 short tracks and spanning a tad short of 40 minutes. The grindcore factor, besides the blasting frenzy and the simplistic riffs, is dubious, for the music of genuine grindcore outfits bears monolithic, stripped-down, punk rock etiquette (Napalm Death's debut album, Blood's _Impulse to Destroy_ and so forth), and their sound is way less polished or sophisticated. In that sense, BTBG has recorded highly energetic, adrenaline-inducing, extremely fast and at timed quite varied form of death metal, introducing vocals that are higher in pitch than your habitual cookie monster performance and many short interludes between tracks, which lend the music -- that can often fall into utter grinding cacophony -- a laid-back and varied ingredient. In that sense, those interludes save the whole recording from falling into the overkill trap, a trap over-enthusiastic bands fall into whenever they wish to display their brutality in such a way that this very brutality practically kills the music, renders it almost white noise. _Our Ashes Built Mountains_ is a well done accomplishment by a young and highly motivated Australian band which trudges old routes, being equipped with the most updated, polished sound and some aiding electronica. Is this grindcore? You decide...

Contact: http://www.myspace.com/beyondterrorbeyondgrace

(article published 15/1/2011)