Beastwars, Blood Becomes Fire: This is a Temple
Beastwars are not a band who do anything small. From their massive-sounding production, to the epic themes in their songs, to the scale of their artwork, the Wellington, New Zealand, foursome operate in one mode, and that mode is huge. Even in the quiet, brooding moments of their second self-released LP, Blood Becomes Fire, on the title-track for example, or the earlier “Rivermen,” they retain an imposing sensibility, pushing sludge riffs, noise crunch and modern doom atmospherics in songs that — contrary to what one would almost certainly expect unless they encountered Beastwars‘ 2011 self-titled debut (review here) — only once pass the five-minute mark and never wander far from a discernible structure. Pace varies more than mood on the vinyl-ready 39-minute/10-track offering, and Blood Becomes Fire is almost universally aggressive, but as big as they go sonically, Beastwars — vocalist Matt Hyde, guitarist Clayton Anderson, bassist James Woods and drummer Nathan Hickey — don’t give in to metallic chestbeating. As they did on the self-titled, Hyde ‘s vocals convey a persistent drama through a deceptively varied array of clean lines and harsher growls, and that in combination with Anderson‘s riffing, Woods‘ at-the-forefront low end and Hickey‘s plodding stomp is more than enough to get the point across of their dominance. As a unit, they work with vicious efficiency and even more than their first offering, Blood Becomes Fire is an individualized show of their potency and memorable songwriting. It is stylistically consistent with its predecessor, but an all-around more developed collection, and one that’s been met with considerable critical hyperbole and “album of the year”-type praise. That was true of the first record as well, and an accordingly sizable response seems fitting for an outfit so bent on sonic grandiosity, but whatever laurels have been placed on Beastwars’ collective head, they deliver on Blood Becomes Fire a full-length that seems less concerned with exciting critics and more about bashing skulls in the live sphere. Certainly the instrumental and vocal hooks alike speak to that, and if it’s a signal of the band’s affinity for staging their material, it’s only served to make them a tighter, crisper unit.
The album impresses even unto its symmetry. Ten tracks are split easily into two vinyl sides with the three-minute “Dune” leading off at a faster clip, taking a winding verse riff and opening it to a bigger chorus topped with Hyde’s harsh, sometimes Kirk Windsteinian snarling. Woods’ bass does a lot of the work in filling out the opener, but the guitars are still at the fore sonically with the drums and vocals cutting through. Beastwars change the feel between the tracks enough so that “Dune” doesn’t quite hint at everything they have to offer throughout, but it’s an effective start for Blood Becomes Fire all the same and builds momentum that they carry through to the subsequent “Imperium,” the second longest cut at 4:36 and built around a nasty, crushing groove, Anderson and Woods not so much fighting for prominence as uniting at the front to pummel together. Stops in the bridge lead to some double-kick from Hickey, and Hyde maintains an almost indecipherable guttural gnash vocally, rasping out lines in rhythmic time before slipping back into the tonal assault from whence he came. Just before three minutes in, he moves into a jarring, higher-pitched scream that signals the height of the track’s push – Anderson follows soon on guitar and Hyde moves up on bass as well, mounting a swirl that they skillfully take back to the initial groove, Hickey cutting to half-time on the drums to march the way out. A noise rock – that’s not to say AmRep, not knowing if it’s actually an influence or coincidence of sound – bite shows up in “Tower of Skulls,” mostly in Woods’ tone, but also in the cyclical lurch of the riff, though Hyde’s vocals and the midpoint surge of melody give that noise a different context that emphasizes Beastwars’ ability to take something familiar and make it their own. Following an uptempo bridge, they hit the brakes and Anderson layers a lead into the verse riff to serve as a bookending outro, leading to the darker “Realms,” which offers some middle ground between the more impact-minded crushers and the moody side A closer, “Rivermen” to come. More subdued initially in its vocals, feedback and drum thud meter out an underlying threat that comes to bear in an impressive – if short at 3:04 – linear build, Hyde shouting out memorable repetitions based around the line “This is a temple.” So it may be. He brings the instruments with him to a manic wash, the song cutting short to let “Rivermen” start slow.
Less linear than “Realms,” “Rivermen” plays off quiet/loud contrast and winds up very much the latter, toying with tempo as well as volume as it transitions from a slower first half into its later push, melodic guitar layering in the open space in which Hyde’s voice echoes out its shouts and screams as it waits for the arrival of the final riff. The vocals end, which on a CD or digital listen lets the immediate launch of “Caul of Time” provide a jolt, whereas on vinyl the break gives some moment of recovery before Anderson’s guitar starts off at a run. “Caul of Time” boasts one of Blood Becomes Fire’s best choruses, and so would make an easy single pick, but there’s more to it than just its strong hook, the drums, guitar and bass coming together in a bridge to carve their way through an insistent break en route to the final chorus. Woods starts “Ruins,” which follows, and is soon joined by Hickey in a quick build into the verse. Anderson isn’t far behind, but with the bass lead-in, Woods feels prominent even after Hyde enters on vocals, though he steps back for the chorus. On an album so thoughtfully structured and presented as individual pieces feeding the strength of an overarching whole – which Blood Becomes Fire is – there are bound to be so-called “deep cuts,” but for serving to add variety to the record and for its emergent vocal ferocity, “Ruins” is hardly a step down from “Caul of Time,” it’s just less hooky. The ending start-stops add a militaristic feel, but even here, it’s Woods up front with Hickey’s snare. Hyde’s vocals drift into mournful, regretful sounding verses on the subsequent title-track, which grows tension through a deep, chugging cycle of a verse before opening to a wider-stretching semi-chorus riff that saves the bigger change for the last third, where Anderson once again introduces more melody into the guitar – that might be some effects-laden acoustic layered in, but I can’t be sure – and paves the way for the resurgent chug to cap and move into the like-minded beginning of “Shadow King,” which is practically ‘90s industrial in its cold feel and that electronic-sounding beat met head-on by Anderson’s guitar. Leaving the intro behind, Hickey counts the way into “Shadow King”’s central progression, Hyde weaving an epic tale over full instrumental thrust, sitting back for a quick lead before the second verse. “Shadow King” feels more chorus-based than either “Ruins” or “Blood Becomes Fire,” and its grounding effect is welcome even if the opening is a departure.
Of course, they bring it full circle at the end, but before they get there, the track hits a powerfully heavy peak, Hickey’s drums ending solo as the wisping smoke of feedback opens into the ultra-brooding intro of “The Sleeper,” a suitably epic finale and the longest track on Blood Becomes Fire at 5:35. As efficient as Beastwars have been throughout, it’s no surprise that for the only cut that tops five minutes, they’d spend that extra time well, and so they do, embarking on a build that wraps up the volatile aspects of the album without sounding redundant or forced. Almost exactly halfway through, they explode to a wave of low distortion, Hyde’s shouts slicing through the chaos before a buzzsaw lead takes hold and Blood Becomes Fire enters its last throes. Just before the four-minute mark, Hyde commands, “Let the soul awaken!” and presumably the remainder of the song is bent toward doing just that. Whether it gets there I suppose is something that depends on the listener, but Anderson finds the perfect position for a final solo – buried deep but still notable – before a few last lines and a quick descent into feedback deconstruction ends cold. Cold and big. Big and nasty. Beastwars came out of the gate with their aesthetic in hand. That is, if there was a process of discovery, it happened before they put the self-titled to tape. So to find them this time with a firm sense of what they want to create is no surprise, but that doesn’t in the slightest diminish the appeal of Blood Becomes Fire, since the consistency comes with a palpable development of their approach. Whatever extremity of praise Beastwars may have received for their second outing, the least one can say about it is that they have delivered a logical next step from the debut and found a sonic niche for themselves that’s not quite adherent to genre so much as it is using a variety of genre elements to create a sound of the band’s own. The album’s largesse is pervasive, its energy primal, its songs deceptively infectious. Beastwars remain at home in the humongous.
Tags: Beastwars, Beastwars Blood Becomes Fire, Blood Becomes Fire, New Zealand, Unsigned bands, Wellington
