Beyond Hell, The Sleeper Awakens
Lo-fi, raw and bestial to its rotten core, the debut full length from death doomsters Beyond Hell harkens back to the early days of the U.S. death metal scene — back to the primordial rising of Death, Obituary and Autopsy. The Sleeper Awakens is a dark, brooding and crushing first full length effort from this Missouri/Texas trio that, while built on an Old School Death Metal base, does incorporate aesthetics of doom and Swedish death metal nicely.
Thick buzzing guitars dominate the slow to mid-paced aural bludgeoning found throughout the first nine tracks (the last four are from the band’s EP …And Evil Crept Through) while flourishes of tortured leads and arpeggio sweeps explode from the album’s classic sound here and there. Rhythmically, the momentum of the disc can be described as a slow descent into the thick tar pits of La Brea. For the most part the pace is steady, chugging along at a mid-tempo gallop, but the guys are easily capable of slowing it down to a doomy crawl just as much as they are able to deliver a quick burst of frenetic goodness. Building on the group’s doom inspired death metal are vocals that also have that old school vibe, menacingly barking out tales of horror and evil.
The end result is an album that sounds and feels as if it were recorded in death metal’s heyday.
Unlocking the Gates of Slumber (Intro)
The opening intro incorporates some nice acoustic guitar work before an over-the-top-cheesy squeaking door sound clip (which fits the overall theme of the album nicely) brings us to the first proper song on the album.
The World Burns Forever
“The World Burns Forever” gets underway with a series of arpeggio sweeps over the first minute as big riffs build to the intro of the fairly deep, gruff gutturals vocals. The pace to this song is pretty slow, but when combined to the buzzed out riffs this song sounds huge with a massive head-banging groove.
Approaching Doom
Another sickly evil, yet melodic bit of guitar work accompanies the slower, gloomier vocals for the first half minute before the guys pick up the pace to a decent gallop. Man, the lo-fi, recorded-in-my-garage vibe to this album is awesome. Sounds like the early Death tapes I used to hide from my folks back in middle school. My only issue with this song and the album as a whole is that the lead work often sounds repetitive — well delivered and evil, but similar to the lead before it. At any rate, I love this song.
The Way of Death
“The Way of Death” has some of the quicker drum work found on the album after another monolithic and methodical pace opens the song up. The buzzing guitars have a huge doom influence injected into them throughout this three and a half minute song. The lead at 2:04 is a bit in the background, but no less vehement in it’s delivery. We also here a little more variation in the vocal presentation, as well. It definitely helps the album from becoming monotonous with the slower pace it contains.
Spawned in the Stars
I love the Obituary vibe to the opening riffs on this next track. It sounds like it could have been taken out of The End Complete. Beyond Hell keep it their own, however, with the slight addition of a melodic feel. The vocals also appear to have gotten a bit deeper and more varied as extended, higher-pitch screams are used well. The pounding drums toward the latter half of the song are barbaric as all get out.
Apocalyptic Dreams
“Apocalyptic Dreams” opens with a rather raucous (for this band) start as crushing drums and meaty riffs get the blood flowing immediately. This is one of the more standout songs on the album, mostly for it’s pace, but also for the varied vocal delivery (perhaps two vocalists this time around) that gives the song a nice change of direction. It’s too bad this is one of the slower songs on the album — there’s a lot in this song that I would love to hear more of (the distorted leads being just one of them).
The Sleeper Awakens
The title track has a more dramatic and instrumental vibe to the first minute and a half with plenty of melodic guitar lead work and steady drum work. The solemn vibe that the first half of the song delivered is quickly swallowed with excellent Swedish death metal inspired riffs and bludgeoning drums as the dual vocals are used quite effectively again. For a relatively short (3:39) song, there’s an epic feel to the track.
Embrace the Eternal Darkness
This six and a half minute long monster is easily the longest song on the album by more than a couple of minutes. It also has one hell of a doomy riff to open with. Man, this is a massive track with loads of slowly moving, burly riffs to accompany the straight-from-an-open-grave vocals. This sounds like some sort of nightmare, especially as the layered vocals come into full effect. The tempo does pick up at the half way point with a slick bit of guitar work and chugging riffs before descending once again into a solemn, melancholy swirl of guitar and suffocating atmosphere.
Outro
Another short instrumental to end out the album before moving onto the bonus EP tracks.
The album’s last four songs are from the band’s limited run EP …And Evil Crept Through. They’re pretty darn good in their own right and a nice to have since most everyone reading this probably won’t have the release in their collection. I’d suggest skipping the intro and getting right into the meat of the band’s brand of OSDM.
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Additional Notes:
n/a