Beaten to Death – Sunrise Over Rigor Mortis

By RingMaster Review on June 18, 2024 • ( 0 )

You can never find yourself going short of rousing punishment and senses corroding mistreatment within realms of extreme noise however they may be shaped and come. It is the kind of abusive pleasure we for one hanker for and no one has been more innovative and thrilling in unleashing such creative carnage over the years than Norwegian mavericks BEATEN TO DEATH. Now the Oslo based outfit, on the back of declaring that they have all “aged horribly” since the band’s acclaimed last album, the 2021 released Last Maar, Ik Verhuis Naar Het Bos, have uncaged its successor, Sunrise Over Rigor Mortis. Even knowing that the tongue never slips too far from their cheeks, there was the inevitable question…has the passing years brought their music to heel as it seems it may have their bodies?

The answer is quickly clear and simple, their grindcore bred scourge of a sound is as uncompromising, creatively twisted and as unforgivingly castigating as ever and again within their new album an inspiring pleasure. Once more the band unleash a collection of tracks that grin at their creators with self-deprecating fun but equally chew up wider targets in a world adding to that wearing down of bodies and spirits though a process that the quintet of vocalist Anders Bakke (She Said Destroy), guitarists/ backing vocalists Martin Rygge (Insense) and Tommy Hjelm (Insense), bassist Mika Martinussen, and drummer Christian “Bartender” Svendsen (Tsjuder, The Cumshots) equally find the positivity in. It is unsurprisingly also an album seeing the band piss on expectations, choke predictability, and embrace new richness in their innovatory prowess.

As with all their releases, Sunrise Over Rigor Mortis was recorded live and mixed by guitarist Tommy Hjelm and comes wrapped in the expressive art of William Hay and as with all, it does not waste any time in making and leaving its mark. From the first nagging riff of opening track, Dalbane, band and album had attention locked and loaded, quickly turning its pugilist jab of a start into an unbridled tirade of sound and voice. Rhythmically rapacious around that unrelenting nagging the track soon wormed under the skin where it creatively twisted and turned like a predacious dervish.

Its brief but exhilarating moment is followed and matched by My Hair Will Be Long Until Death, a track described as “presumably about being a True Norwegian Melodic Grindcore bass player with no self-awareness”. It descends in a tempest of noise and craft, every breath and second a debilitating assault apart from its progressively lined calms that more than tickled fascination. Beautiful carnage is the best way to describe the song as too the following Enkel Resa Till Limfabriken as it goes from enervating brutality to melodically toxic and senses wringing enterprise. The song also epitomises the pulling of various flavours that BEATEN TO DEATH bring to their invention, often fleeting veins in the turbulence but always a striking part of the captivation.

Minus Och Minus Blir Minus Och Minus is bolder in that diversity, strolling in on an ear tempting groove before opening grunge/alt rock arms. Of course this is just a moment in its creative mischief, the song soon unravelling as rhythms pursued and that groove further entangled the senses with every passing second revelling in its grindcore breeding.

From one delicious piece of incitement to another as Mosh For Mika (Waddle Waddle) turned its opening chug into a feral tapestry of varied funk/rock and experimental adventure. It soon had the imagination lusting for its exploits and hardcore instincts with its dispute breaking out in extreme fissures of sound before making way for the cantankerously bewildering, bewitching and just as irresistible Dying The Dream. Like an aural mosaic, the track comes together in a kaleidoscope of flavours and genres to serenade, croon, and obliterate the senses across its ever twisting and evolving landscape.

Through the riveting creative discord of Life But How To Leave It and its persistently changeable corrosive fury and We’re Not Gonna Make It with its resignation of unrequited dreams yet within a fury of grievous sound subsequently brought into a seventies hard/classic rock celebration, BEATEN TO DEATH simply escalated the grip and joy of Sunrise Over Rigor Mortis. This maybe a proposition seeded in the ageing process but it is an opening of a new sphere of enterprise and creative shenanigans.

Ormer Til Tarmer, Mane Pa Hodet brings the album to a close, presenting its own uniquely hellacious infestation of grindcore hostility and inventive mania for a searing and fascinating end. Again every second bought unexpected adventure and drama but equally greed provoking violations few can dream of let alone rival.

BEATEN TO DEATH may be getting old but they are also getting more imaginative, exacting and vital.

Sunrise Over Rigor Mortis is out now via Mas-Kina Recordings; available digitally and on CD and Vinyl @ https://beatentodeath.bandcamp.com/album/sunrise-over-rigor-mortis-2