Year: 2025
Label: self-released
And thusly, we segue from 2024 towards 2025 in reviews as well: Finnish Beatrix’s new EP Deathsent Ceremony was released on January 1st. Apparently the EP was a long time in the making due to various unfortunate events, but no matter: evil metal does not get old.
Evil metal is a pretty apt description for Beatrix. Their brand of hard and sleazy extreme metal exists somewhere in the no man’s land between thrash metal and black metal. Ultimately, it’s too black to be thrash and too thrash to be black, and black/thrash is a non-genre often used by bands who are to wussy and polished to be either, so evil metal sounds nice.
Because there’s absolutely nothing wussy or polished about Beatrix. Deathsent Ceremony harkens back to the bygone days of ordering demo tapes and CDr’s via mail based on name and distro list description alone, never knowing really what you were about to get. More often than not, something dirty, a bit on the sloppy side, but – if you got lucky! – with a spark of genius.
And that’s Beatrix. The musicianship is far from tight, although not too sloppy. Sometimes, in the faster sections, the drummer sounds like he’s on the verge of falling apart, but manages to keep things in check. Barely. But barely is enough – and it gives the music a hint of danger, of unpredictability. And no doubt about it: there’s a rock solid concept here. Vicious, venomous archaic extreme metal uniting thrash and black into an unholy union. Vocals that are more of a snotty snarl than black metal shrieks, riffs that hint at the band overdosing on old school cult acts such as Poison besides a steady diet of black and thrash classics, and so on.
And all’s well and good so far. Beatrix definitely display a thorough aesthetical mastery of this well-worn mixture of styles. As far as the shape and form of the music go, Beatrix nail it down, and do it with gusto.
But there’s a small catch. As energizing and endearing as their somewhat untight, frenetic thrashing is, at the end of Deathsent Ceremony one misses memorable moments. There aren’t riffs, choruses or solos here that would make one stop and pay attention. It’s all too easy to listen to the EP all the way through and realize you remember nothing of the songs itself, just an overall impression of the sound.
And that’s a shame, because everything here speaks of immense potential. The stylistic trappings, the authentic approach, the unbridled energy. All that’s missing are killer songs to match everything else. But apparently the guys are working on a full-length album as we speak – hopefully they’ll turn the knobs up to 11 for that one.
Only Death Is Real 