Beheaded - Never to Dawn (2012)

Never to Dawn is one of those records which I could hurl a hundred compliments at, and yet still, when the dust of all that praise cleared, I'd have to admit that I didn't derive a wealth of enjoyment from it. The fourth Beheaded full-length, and second for Unique Leader, it does actually steer the Maltese band's sound away from its predecessors into a slightly more unique realm, and it's easily the best produced in terms of the drumming, the guitar tone, the vocals, and the use of a few decently timed samples. The cover art is phenomenal, while sort of keeping the theme of its predecessor Ominous Bloodline, but strangely enough, it lacks some of the dark depth and density of that disc. Don't get me wrong, this is still intense and meticulous death metal, but it honestly has more of an organic feel to it through the higher studio standards implemented.

Where before, Beheaded were perhaps all too easily comparable to a number of other pummeling brutal death bands like Deeds of Flesh, Internal Suffering, or Suffocation, this album often reminded me of acts like Hate Eternal, Diabolic, Cannibal Corpse, with perhaps a few touches of Polish extremity circa Behemoth or Vader's blast sequences, and loads of Morbid Angel grooves. Christ Brincat has never sounded better than here, and in fact I'd go as far as to say the mix of his drums simply crushes anything on the earlier works presenting us with a lot of clarity into just how hard (and often) he hits, how intricate his footwork. The rhythm guitars in pieces like "Elapsed in the Vortex of Extin" are choppy and explosive, with a lot of the band's forward firing palm mutes interspersed in decent tremolo patterns, which at their most corpulent (the closing moments of "The Ancient Acumen") often entailed a little Swedish harmonic death influence. The bass guitar wasn't often sticking out for me, but at least I could hear it battering away down there like a mallet. Most impressive were some of the lead sequences, like in "Elapsed...", where they hit that great groove in the bridge, really taking the whole experience to another level. I only wish there were a few more comparable moments of excitement through the 3/4 of an hour the album lasts.

In the tradition of never having the same vocalist twice on any full-length, they've got another new one here named Frank Calleja, and he's hands down the most distinct they've had yet, capable of not only molding himself to the bands blunter guttural barrage, but leaving a trail of ground up organs in his wake with a nasty snarl not unlike the Floridian forebears like John Tardy, or coughing up some gruel like Peter of Vader. In fact, you can just feel this dude reaching into his gut to pull out these tortured, blood gargling tones and it adds a lot of depth and character. For this and numerous other reasons, Never to Dawn is hard to deny as a creative, production pinnacle for the group, at least since Perpetual Mockery; the caveat is that a lot of the songs really don't stand out to me in their entirely. There are some great parts, sure, and I really dug the mostly instrumental "Towards an Abducted Sun" and both the first and last tunes, but overall this was always a step or two below mind-blowing and I was eagerly awaiting more explosive, memorable note progressions that just never came to be. Ultimately, it's a very professional, seasoned brutal death outing, and fans of Morbid Angel, Hate Eternal, Severed Savior, Vader and late 90s Kataklysm should check it out and see what they think.

Verdict: Win [7/10]

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Beheaded - Ominous Bloodline (2005)

Hardly a departure from the direction Beheaded were pursuing with the two previous releases, Ominous Bloodline succeeds because of two important factors: a stronger sense of purpose and punishment to the songwriting which is manifest through a bevy of superior riffing, and a deeper, darker production standard which encapsulates the guttural, often gurgling vocals, courtesy of Melchior Borg, the vocalist coming in to replace Lawrence Joyce. I won't lie, this is essentially Recounts of Disembodiment 'in space', done right, and dutifully and mercilessly kicking the shit out of you. Perhaps it's just the excellent cover art, or the opacity of the music's mechanical intensity, but listening through this disc was like being in a space vessel as it was being swallowed by a black hole (or Elder God, if that's your thing), shaking to pieces while the rest of the crew around you bursts into an abstract sculpture of blood and organs. Resurgence of Oblivion and Recounts of Disembodiment failed to even place me in a proper headlock, but Ominous Bloodline thrusts me down on the block and proceeds with a single, savage stroke to separate my brain cage from the rest of my body.

Mind you, there's nothing particularly novel or unique about the album in terms of its techniques. Choppy semi-technical spurts of rhythmic voracity infused with breakdowns circa Suffocation; tail end trilling guitar surgeries courtesy of Cannibal Corpse; callous, cold blasting redolent of Deeds of Flesh. But the pacing and balance of each track is more meticulous. The rhythm guitars have this processed punch to them that feels like you're bonked rapidly and repeatedly in the face with a wrench, and when they lapse into a groove you can really feel the weight of the mutes to the point where it becomes irresistible to resist the primal, pit starved neanderthal within. Imagine the primates pacing about the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey if they were to suddenly start moshing one another. The leads, too, are fare more skillfully elevated to give off a progressive, almost jazzy eloquence as they scream off into the vacuum of utter darkness, and the bass guitar thunders along like turbulence as you're entering the atmosphere of a dead, or dying world. I can certainly understand why some might find the snare drum too clappy sounding, and the drums do more or less give off a soulless, robotic impression, but the force of the kicks and the overall aesthetic actually work well with the vast, otherworldly horror of the music, a nihilistic intergalactic asylum.

The vocals, likewise, are an improvement over the previous record in that you can really feel out the brute soreness of the delivery. He's got a good, growling sustain, and there are plenty of snarls spackled over the density of the guttural to keep the performance schizophrenic and malevolent, or spatial effects (as in "Ill Remains") that enforce the dark, futuristic appeal of the writing (though the lyrics aren't necessarily sci-fi in nature). The selection of tremolo picked guitars here isn't necessarily more athletic or original than on Recounts, but it's certain set in a better contrast with the denser low notes and feels more freshly grating and hostile. Tracks like "Rooted in Profundity" or "Vaults of Ageless Pain" can certainly deliver a headache due to their potent, percussive construction, but all told I felt far more enthusiastic and engrossed in the material than ever before, even on the band's promising debut Perpetual Mockery which was an incarnation of the band as its most promising and unique. Ominous Bloodline isn't ultimately the most individual sounding record in the medium, and in terms of technicality or riff progression it's not as 'rocket science' as it looks, but it's nonetheless a damn fine brutal death record, and a pugilistic monument of escapism.

Verdict: Win [8/10] (radiating in utter revulsion)

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Beheaded - Recounts of Disembodiment (2002)

If it's any indicator as to just how dreadfully forgettable Beheaded's sophomore Recounts of Disembodiment is in the grand scheme of brutality, I had actually completely forgotten that it existed, and was beginning to put down my thoughts for its successor Ominous Bloodline when I had the nagging suspicion that I was missing something. From its formulaic songwriting framework to its use of one of Toshihiro Egawa's least impressive cover images, there's just nothing about this album that screams 'listen to me' over any number of other brutal death atrocities of the new millennium, and it suffers from a lot of the same symptoms that plagued its predecessor, the Resurgence of Oblivion EP. Not a total bust, and by no means a terrible record, but this one leaves the psychic impression of the 'also-ran' stamped upon its surface in so many places that any benefits one otherwise might have derived from the experience are smothered. In short, there's just nothing curious or compelling about Recounts of Disembodiment that I can't find elsewhere.

The writing here is occasionally as harried and fast-paced as the prior EP, but here they've settled into a lot of 4x chug/tremolo riff setups that feel soddenly generic and uninteresting when there are such a vaster array of dynamics available to such skilled musicians as Beheaded obviously are. If the note progressions were at least ear catching or 'evil' sounding, that might be one thing, but most of the structure to this album reminds me of textbook Deicide blueprints being filtered through a Suffocation lens. The palm muted slam grooves are a dime a dozen, without ever configuring into something truly violent, and the interspersion of these against the faster material is all too predictable and staged to sound like yet another of countless worship bands. Granted, there are a few tunes among the ten here that raise the stakes due a few superior grooves or old school death metal spurts which sound immediately more menacing than any of the by-the-numbers; "Consecrated Absurdities", "Compelling Derangement" and "Fed Upon Odium" all have a few moments of shine amidst the surrounding dullness, but even these don't engage the imagination for very long. The squeals of the guitars are generally a nuisance, and as with Resurgence..., I found the blunt and percussive vocals to remain on the monotonous side, though arguably more diverse in pattern than they had been on the EP.

A few of the leads are interesting, and lyrics remain a strong point for the Maltese, but in truth when I take this particular album and compare it to something by Deeds of Flesh, Cryptopsy, or the earlier works of Australians Psycroptic, I feel like it's often too set into a particular, hollow framework without much by way of inspiring ideas. The production's alright, with a nice sense of crunch to the guitars that gives the strident grooves a feel not unlike Morbid Angel's breakdowns on Domination, or Suffocation's Pierced from Within. The bass has a bit of a bombastic pop to it that helps it register against the guitars, and all of the instruments and vocals are reasonably balanced here. It was Beheaded's best mix to its day, but that can only get you so far, because I can say without question that among the hundreds of riffs throughout the album, there isn't one that truly drags me under. It's the audio equivalent of watching a mundane slasher horror flick which is composed of predictable stabbing after stabbing, and in my opinion the nadir of what work they've yet released. Worthwhile only if you're one to get excited by anything brutal, mildly technical and with the appropriately sick cover art and logo.

Verdict: Indifference [5.75/10] (the predator will gradually gorge)

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Beheaded - Resurgence of Oblivion EP (2000)

I'd be the last person to argue that Beheaded's 2000 EP Resurgence of Oblivion offered the listener some advancements in production quality over their debut Perpetual Mockery, but stylistically I felt like there was something more stylistically paint-by-numbers, or statistically average in the five tracks here which wasn't nearly so compelling or balanced as the earlier full-length. Almost as if I could just interchange this material with any number of other acts fielding similar excursions into brutality. Though it would be years before they actually signed to Unique Leader Records themselves, there was definitely a similar aesthetic underpinning this EP's songwriting to acts like Disgorge, Mortal Decay or Deeds of Flesh who would also end up there at some point.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but certainly in the case of Resurgence of Oblivion we've got more of a hard on for punishment than personality, and it shows stiffly through the seams of the members' jeans. The note patterns have become more complex, but no less percussive than their earlier songs, but though they're induced with more clarity in the superior guitar tone, they feel no less muddled as any number of the less technical, less interesting progressions present on the debut. Certainly the numerical increase in lightning mutes and oppressive harmonies, or the more surgical picking sequences here could have lent themselves to a taut and impressive effort, but most of the songs on this EP blend together entirely, to the point that I find them very hard to discern from one another in the memory. Despite the ceaseless tirade of notes being thrust past my nose, none of them really smell like the reeking, festering corpse I desire from the best of death metal, and thus I'm left on the sidelines of the football match fan base to which this sort of material generally appeals. As always, I'm never one to search for a record to which my action is merely 'dude, that was so brutal', but poignant and soul scarring music I'll want to revisit 10 years hence.

Resurgence of Oblivion is nothing of the sort, but I suppose I should point out that at least the disc sounds better, with a more pinpoint accuracy to the guitars' distortion that complements both their more urgent sense of intensity and the muscular drumming, which is frankly still a fraction loud in there. The bass lines here are far better than on the debut, with a rumbling, popping, and colon rupturing presence that generates acrobatic contrast to the rhythm guitars. The leads are wilder and more frivolous than on the first album, just screaming off into the darkness of the rhythm section under the tenets of bands like Slayer or Pestilence. I will say that the newer vocalist on this, one Lawrence Joyce, seemed like a step down from his predecessor in terms of charisma. His guttural, staccato timbre plays out like a natural sibling to the kick drum through the disc, but at the same time it's a lot more monotonous in structure and never really interesting. Then again, this was what a lot of the most intense/brutal death bands at the dawn of the 21st century were gunning for, and I can hardly fault the overall banality of this material with his performance.

In the end, enjoyment of the EP comes down to a question of whether or not you're a fiend for this brand of face clubbing, unwavering brutality and business to the level that you're willing to forgive a lack of strong dynamics and interesting riff construction just to have more of it. Personally I had hoped the band would continue its more atmospheric paths off the debut, tighten the production and build themselves a Maltese masterwork of murder. Instead, this is something that failed to distinguish itself beyond a nod towards the band's obvious levels of ability. Not bad, perhaps, but had I not been determined to explore through their entire discography again, it would still sit stolidly in the oblivion it celebrates.

Verdict: Indifference [6/10]  

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Beheaded - Perpetual Mockery (1998)

Apart from its historical significance as a point of conquest for a great many regimes, from the Greeks and Romans to the French and British, there is not a lot I know about the Republic of Malta. It's an island chain in the Mediterranean which I presume bears some similarities to places like Sicily, Tunisia, and other surrounding cultural environs. They speak English about as well as their own, national Maltese, and like any other unsung corner or hole of the world, no matter how obscure, they've produced a healthy if small metal scene. This began to take shape in the 90s, through influences of doom and death metal, and has ultimately resulted in a few of their most extreme bands gaining a cult following worldwide, the best known of which is Beheaded of Fgura, which is in the south of the country.

Though formed in 1991, once these gentlemen started becoming productive we were well into the age when brutality, as an aesthetic, had begun to grow independent of the thrash-based songwriting which had birthed death metal in the first place. Bands like Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse, Deicide and Suffocation were already immensely popular despite how far underground the genre had been wedged, and thus it's really no surprise that Beheaded tear off more than a page from the bible black of these artists. Murky, impenetrable rhythm guitar tone anchored by a lot of slower, trudging groove rhythms. A strong blasting element here, used often against a mid-to-fast tempo chugging guitar, with drums playing a rather voluminous role overall in the mix of this 1998 full-length debut, Perpetual Mockery. Guttural, hoarse thug vocals which often remind me of Frank Mullen or Lord Worm but never descent to the level of toilet bowl flusing; with a predilection for bursts of snarling mayhem redolent of how Deicide or Carcass introduced this sort of schizoid, sinister technique, though each of the inflections is often set up individually to bark specific lines.

But what really set Perpetual Mockery apart from many other, forgettable records of its age, is the strong presence of ambiance and atmosphere through both the ominous chord selection and implementation of synthesizers and acoustic guitars to break up the potential palm-muted monotony. Later in their career, the Maltese evolved into more of a straight, overly brutal USDM style, but here on the debut there is great deal of variation and 'measured intensity', by which I mean Beheaded were very much concerned with the balance of their songwriting techniques, creating metal that was admittedly accessible to a broader range of listener than your typical, estranged cannibal mosher. I wouldn't go so far as to dub this with the ever so ebullient 'progressive' tag, but clearly if the band had continued along in this direction that would have been applied to their legacy. Tracks like the lush "Ethereal Passages" with its cleans and spatial organs, or the moody intro to "Vae Victus (Prayer for the Vanquished)" provide a welcome contrast to the more percussive oriented bludgeoning elsewhere throughout the record.

I also noticed, in addition to the occasional squeals amidst the chugging, that the Maltese had a heavy influence from technical death/thrash of the late 80s, in particular bands like Atheist, or more precisely the first two Pestilence records (Mallevs Maleficarvm most of all). Whether this is entirely conscious or not I can't say, but there is definitely a harried, clinical subtext to many of the faster-based riffing sequences which often become the most compelling throughout the 45 minutes. Leads and melodies are also well utilized; even where the note progressions aren't exactly memorable, their solemn vacuity helps balance off against the more meat-headed, primal rhythm guitar/drum patterns. I couldn't notice a lot of bass through the album, other than an occasional distorted break or burst, but this is in part due to the band's focus on making those low end grooves feel dense and meaty, which leads me to what I actually don't enjoy about the disc...

The production. Granted, Beheaded were emerging from a smaller metal market and thus not one used to handling this sort of record, but I'm just not a huge fan of the dense and squawking rhythm guitar tone, which at best reminded me of some of the Morrisound disappointments. The drums have a level balance to them, and are very much in the listener's face the whole time, partially reducing the guitar to this kind of annoying, muffled drone when the instrument is not actually exploring the fretboard. To their credit, all of the cleaner guitars, the leads, and the synthesizers are plainly heard, as are the vocals, and intricacies of the more involved guitar sequences, but there points here where I just felt as if I was beating beaten on the ear with a rubber mallet, and not in a good way. I also wish the bass just stood out more in general from the mutes.

In the end, though, Perpetual Mockery is still an impressive outing, especially from such an unexpected territory, and it was more seasoned and dynamically pleasing than a great deal of dreck emerging from, say, the US underground at the same time. Its production values definitely 'place it' back in the mid through late 90s, and it doesn't have the same timeless resonance as several other, higher budget records, but it was a nice alternative for fans of Suffocation, Pyrexia and Cryptopsy to explore. With its intelligent lyrics and interesting compositional choices, this still largely holds up as one of their finest hours, alongside the more devastating 2005 effort Ominous Bloodline.

Verdict: Win [7.75/10] (sowing seeds of adversity)

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