It is certainly true that the guys in Beneath The Sky can play if the band’s debut album “What Demons Do To Saints” is any indicator. Jeff Nelson and Chris Profitt lead a dual-guitar assault driven by skillfully executed rapid-fire riffs, Brandon Sowder pounds on his drum kit with the relentless ferocity of a machine gun and Matt Jones adds a hint of melody through his well-utilized keyboard work.
There’s just one problem: the band is not really distinctive in any way, shape or form.
The Cincinnati-based band is one of many acts seeking to capitalize on the popularity of a sound that can be described as “metalcore-pop.” This emerging sub-genre, which has been brought into the modern rock mainstream by the likes of As I Lay Dying and Killswitch Engage, combines the uncompromising guitar riffs and over-the-top vocals of metal with the pace and intensity of hardcore punk. However, what distinguishes this sound from straight metalcore is that it incorporates some melody and hooks in order to make it more palatable to mainstream rock audiences.
These bands are certainly not as intense or threatening as those in the Scandinavian mess-with-your-mind metal scene, yet they have a powerful enough sound to rock the socks off of most screamo/post-hardcore/whatever’s-popular-at-Warped Tour-this-year bands.
From the grinding-yet-melodic guitars to Nelson’s death metal-influenced guttural vocals, Beneath The Sky fits this sonic template perfectly. In fact, perhaps the band fits this sound too perfectly because it lacks any distinctive characteristics to distinguish itself from the likes of Trivium and Poison the Well.
In some ways, this album is like a compilation of 21st-century metalcore/death metal clichés conveniently packaged together. A vaguely threatening album cover complete with skulls in the background? Check. By-the-book metal breakdowns that you can hear coming a mile away? Check. Frequent alternation between screaming and a style of singing that you’ve probably heard on all other rock records released in the past five years? Check.
There are some moments of potential on this album, most notably on “For Each Remembered Name” and “A Grave Mistake.” “For Each Remembered Name” combines harder-than-hard guitar riffs with enough tempo shifts to give the listener whiplash, while “A Grave Mistake” is a relentless-yet-catchy chunk of metalcore-pop reminiscent of As I Lay Dying at its best.
The remainder of the album also contains some hard-hitting moments that effectively use tempo changes, and there isn’t a single song that is downright awful. However, there is a staggering lack of musical variety that makes it nearly impossible to distinguish between most of the tracks on this LP.
Lyrically, most of the tracks on “What Demons Do To Saints” are introspective and sometimes self-empowering rather than the usual accounts of doom and gloom. A number of these songs also exhibit a strong Christian influence, most notably “The Reason,” a sermon-like burst of appreciation set against the sonic backdrop of roaring guitars and ominous keyboard effects.
Essentially, if you are looking for songs about devil-worshipping and other things less than redeeming, don’t buy this CD. Then again, Nelson makes these lyrics barely comprehensible by growling them with as much menace as possible, so you could pretend the songs are about all things evil if you really wanted.
Some could argue that repetition is an inevitable part of this kind of metal and more focus should be placed on guitar technique and instrumental virtuoso instead of songwriting.
However, recent efforts such as Norma Jean’s latest release “Redeemer” have proven that this sound can be taken in new and unexpected directions while retaining enough heaviness to kick your skull in. By contrast, “What Demons Do To Saints” merely repeats musical and lyrical ideas that have been done a thousand times before.
To be fair, this is Beneath The Sky’s first album, and they show enough promise to suggest that they could do some great things in the near future. At the same time, though, it’s hard not to shake off the feeling that Victory Records signed the band just because they were looking for an identical-sounding band to replace Atreyu, which recently departed Victory for major-label territory.
In fact, one could easily imagine the marketing gurus at Victory plastering this CD with a “For Fans of Atreyu and As I Lay Dying” sticker, since that phrase all too appropriately describes this solid-yet-derivative effort
