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Beastwars, The Death of all Things: Totality

beastwars the death of all things

Much has been made the last several weeks about the possibility that Beastwars‘ third full-length, the recently-issued The Death of all Things, will be their last. Fair enough. The Wellington four-piece have referred to it as the final installment of a trilogy that also includes 2013’s Blood Becomes Fire (review here) and their 2011 self-titled debut (review here), and if the nine tracks/40 minutes included on The Death of all Things are really the end of the band, I don’t think anyone could argue with the quality of their output during their tenure, the impact they had or the progression they demonstrated from one album to the next. If this is it, in other words, they’ve been a success. All three of their records, further united by stellar oil painting artwork by Nick Keller, have worked in a blend of grand-scale heavy, derived from sludge and ’90s-style noise rock dissonance, but indebted to neither and growing only more individual in presentation as songwriting takes root in brooding atmospheres.

The Death of all Things might be their best work yet in terms of how the material itself stands out. An opening salvo of “Call to the Mountain” and “Devils of Last Night” — also the album’s two longest tracks at 5:36 and 5:31, respectively (immediate, double points) — leads to the likewise fortified “Some Sell Their Souls,” giving a kinetic beginning to what unfolds from there as a record that owes no more of its overarching affect to impact than to mood. Underlying complexity has long been a factor for Beastwars, glossed over in part because they’re so outwardly heavy, so if The Death of all Things is to be their last outing, it’s all the more appropriate that should be the case here too.

Frontman Matt Hyde (not to be confused with the L.A.-based producer) leads the returning lineup of guitarist Clayton Anderson, bassist James Woods and drummer Nathan Hickey, and his snarling, rasping, growling, howling, grunting approach continues to be a defining factor no less than Anderson‘s rolling riffs, the heft in Woods‘ low end or Hickey‘s snare cutting through to punctuate the morass. Andrew Schneider, who mixed, makes his impact felt there, while James Goldsmith, who produced, keeps the focus rightly on the largesse in the band’s sound.

beastwars (photo by Damian McDonnell)

“Call to the Mountain” and “Devils of Last Night,” both seething with intensity, gripping in their catchiness and marked in their cloud-cover bleak vibe, set the tone for what’s to come, the latter capping with a move into an all-out payoff that seems to answer some of the tension created, but the chorus of “Some Sell Their Souls” becomes even more of a landmark for the early going of The Death of all Things, shorter but also more patient than “Devils of Last Night” and setting up a transition into the more subdued, melodic beginning of “Witches.” That initial impact — starting with “Call to the Mountain,” a condensed-epic very much in Beastwars‘ stylistic wheelhouse — is no coincidence, but neither is the shift that “Some Sell Their Souls” begins into the broader territory that “Witches” continues to cover. Even as “Witches” hits its apex, Hyde and Anderson pushing a surge of energy forward in the song’s second half, the dynamic has changed from the first several tracks, and centerpiece/side B opener “Black Days” moves further out with an upbeat rhythm, scorching guitar and a lyrical reference to pyramids in the sky, which of course graced the cover of the first album half a decade ago.

A temporary slowdown leads to a raucous finish, and “Holy Man,” rages and sways in its beginning and finds solid ground in a second-half bridge of winding noise rock riffs, moving toward a drum-thudding finish that finds Hyde pushing his voice well past the breaking point before the rest of the song deconstructs, giving way to “Disappear,” which starts out like it’s going to work in loud/quiet verse tradeoffs but actually just gets loud and stays that way, building through its first verse to a weighted groove that it doesn’t again relinquish, lead guitar adding melodic counterpoint to the vocal howls in its ending, following another solid hook, maybe not accomplishing anything “Devils of Last Night” didn’t do on side A, but regrounding The Death of all Things in the core of Beastwars‘ songwriting prior to the brief acoustic sojourn of the penultimate “The Devil Took Her,” which brings in strings, keys/flute, quiet guitar and softer vocals for a genuine departure in modus if not mood from everything else on the LP.

To the best of my knowledge, an acoustic Beastwars track is a first, but the resonant strings work well as a precursor to the rumbling beginning of the closing title-track, “The Death of all Things” finishing — how could it not? — as the album’s ultimate resolution, building in aggression through its first verse and into an echoing chorus that, once it starts, doesn’t seem to stop, just moves through different stages for the remainder of the song. “I’ll tell you something/It’s a brand new world,” Hyde intones amid repeated finishing lines, and for Beastwars, if they’re actually looking beyond the existence of the band itself, it may well feel that way. What they leave behind, however, is a three-album legacy of destructive and stylistically ambitious noise/doom/heavy rock that stood out early and became even more their own as they moved forward. One never wants to say never in rock and roll, but if Beastwars are done, then The Death of all Things is the epitaph that a group of their scope and of their sheer gravitational force deserves.

Beastwars, “Witches” official video

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One Response to “Beastwars, The Death of all Things: Totality”

  1. Harvey KM says:

    It’s a sad thing when things come to an end. I first knew about the band here, Of course.

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