There are moments as a reviewer when you wonder if you’ve heard it all. Le temps détruit tout (time destroys everything), so I do wonder if there’s anything left before I become a cranky reviewer who doesn’t see the sunlight and can’t get off the floor without using my hands for support (oh, you feel addressed? Maybe you should!). Despite this, I welcomed Totengott‘s Beyond the Veil with no prejudices. Little did I know, I was about to embark on a strange and uncertain journey. Tag along!
Beyond the Veil defies simple categorization. We start with Death Metal that sounds like another rip-off of Entombed, but after a few tracks, we jump into Doom Metal that could make Candlemass proud. Just when I was about to declare it “Death/Doom,” Beyond the Veil morphs into…Djent? And then Funeral Doom? What is going on here? This album is whatever the people need it to be. It’d be easy to be fooled if you analyze it track by track, but you’d be missing the whole point of the experience. I might have doubts about whether this always works, but Beyond the Veil defies expectations and forces you to listen to its entirety. Otherwise, you just won’t get it.
I usually point out particular elements, but the thing is that they change per song. Somehow, a track like “Sons of Serpent,” which is pure Death N’ Roll, ends up paired with “Beyond the Veil Part I and II,” which are crushing Doom from the graveyard. You might see these as inconsistencies, but Totengott has brought us an album, not a compilation of tracks, which is ironic, given how everything here seems to come from somewhere else. I can’t even tell you what the instruments sound like because they also change from one track to another. Are you confused? Yes, me too!
I’m more conflicted than usual when it comes to Beyond the Veil. On one hand, I appreciate a band willing to truly subvert expectations. On the other, the pace of the album becomes challenging, since you never get to figure it out, especially when you reach the final epic, which is more than 13 minutes of interesting ideas. I’m not sure how it all fits together. If anything, maybe this album is just a homage to traditional nihilism. In a world with no God, everything is permitted, or at least that’s what I infer from Totengott‘s work. Yet, I’m still on the fence about its substance. Do I love the music? I’ll need more time.
Even if I didn’t love each part of Beyond the Veil, we still need a bit more of this lunacy, of breaking rules, even if cranky reviewers remain skeptical. I’m glad I had the opportunity to see that there are still weird and sinister things for me to bite into out there in the cruel and meaningless world. So, are you ready to enjoy some low-key sonic anarchy? It’s cheap!
Label: Hammerheart Records
Release date: 12 July, 2024
Website: https://www.facebook.com/totengottmetal
Country: Spain
Score: this doesn’t make sense anymore, but maybe 3.25/5.0? As I said, it’s meaningless…
Metal Eclipse Reviews 