The Barren Throne, the third album from Iceland’s Beneath, was a solid tech/brutal death metal affair, befitting the label it was released on (Unique Leader), but it was hardly a memorable, game changing album. That looks to have changed with the band’s wholly improved and utterly impressive third album, Ephemeris.
The more cosmic/celestial theme of the material (an ephemeris is a diary or journal that gives the positions of naturally occurring astronomical objects as well as artificial satellites in the sky at a given time or times), has brought with it a development and growth in delivery that should see Beneath rub shoulders with 2017s top notch tech/brutal death metal like Origin and Decrepit Birth.
First, Fredrik Nordström has been brought in to produce and while he is more know for melodic death metal (Dark Tranquillity, In Flames, Arch Enemy, At The Gates etc) the effort here is downright devastating. The guitar tone ( and often the riffs) sometime reminds of Decapitated ‘s “Day 69” era hey day- listen to the down right brilliant “Guillotine”) and with flat out better, varied songs that perfectly balance brutal and complex, the end result is simply killer.
From opener “Constellational Transformation”through punishing grooves of “Eyecatcher” and “Cities of the Outer Reaches” to closer “Multiangular”, this thing just fucking rips. Every track is a killer example of modern death metal that Unique Leader has honed in on, but Beneath have elevated it and delivered a pretty special album that should see Beneath gain a little more international traction and recognition in the hierarchy of brutal/technical death metal.