No Bung! Zone

I must add one more record to my 2005 favorites list; This Elegy, His Autopsy by Beecher (Earache). One of the most beautifully original, insanely convoluted, headspinning albums to grace my speakers for some time. Like the Red Chord and Cephalic Carnage, Beecher manange to avoid the main pitfall of so much of this music, namely sounding like they've written 500 riffs but completely forgot to find a coherent way of making actual songs out of 'em. No matter how angular it gets, no matter how arcane the time siganture at any particular moment, Beecher music FLOWS and, unlike the band who they're most often (unfairly) compared to, Dillinger Escape Plan, the jaw-dropping level of technique this music requires reamins where it should be, in the background, unnoticed. Beechers is a quiet kind of virtuosity, never the focus of the music, a means to and end, instead of an end in itself.

Beautifully produced ny Converge's Kurt Ballou, it's one of the best sounding albums of this ilk ever. If there's one thing which has always fucking bugged the shit out of me about extreme metal/hardcore/whatever it's the drum sound. Biscuit tin snares (Bung!), gating and compression robbing the toms and kicks of their natural resonance, reducing them to lifeless clicks and thuds, removing any trace of dynamics, cymbals nothing but vaguely clanking, hissing things*. No such problems here. The drums are full, fat and resonant, and more importantly, heavy as fucking hell. It actually sounds like a real fucking drum kit, which is an all too rare occurence.

The other thing Beecher do so well is to incorporate electronics and synths into their music far more seemlessly than any other comparable band with the possible exception of Old Man Gloom, Cephalic Carnage or Knut, but it's a much more integral component of their sound than with CC, lending them an almost space rock quality at times, brewing up a power electronic storm to match Whitehouse at others, but never coming across as sonic icing.

There's something about their overall sound which is curiously english-sounding too, primarily beacause of their guitar sounds, there's a good old fashioned mid-range crunch to them that you seldom come across in the recordings of their american contemporaries who seem to favour that high-gain, scooped out tone which while admittedly great for fast riffing, sounds thin and bloodless when played cleaner, and lends many bands a curiously anonymous edge, both because of it's ubiquity and the fact that the frequencies which most determine the timbre of a guitar are primarily in the mid-range, so if y're using massive amounts of gain and cutting the mid it's fucking hard not to sound like everyone else who does the same. In many ways this album is produced in manner more akin to a great rock recording than a metal or hardcore record and that's one of it's great strengths. The use of cleaner guitar sounds in some of the more dissonant passages combined with a willingness to abuse effects pedals you rarely encounter with musicians in this sphere, suggest a love for Sonic Youth, MBV and their ilk too, which can only be a good thing.

I'm not going to single out particular tracks, except to say that "It's Great Weather For Black Leather" is my favourite song title of the year, because this record is best listened to right through, the way it flows from track to track giving the impression of a single, through composed work instead of a disparate collection of songs. Suffice to say I'm fucking impressed.

*More drum complaints:

1. Scott Burns has an awful lot to answer for.

2. Don't get me started on triggers, if yr drummer can't do it without triggers, get a new fucking drummer. One who can tune his fucking kit too...

3. If the engineer/producer tells you it has to be that gated/whatever beacuse it's so dense/fast/whatever that it'll sound like mush, tell them to do their job properly or fuck off and we'll get a new producer. It can be done as this record and much of Steve Albini's engineering work proves. It just takes skill, ears and patience, qualities which seem to be sadly lacking in too many engineers today. Check out Victory Intolerance Mastery by Revenge, no triggers, no over-gating, just unbelievably fast blastbeats with a big fat sound you could knock a fucking wall down with. See, told you, don't it sound better like that?