### Dead Beyond Buried: Condemned to misery

#### 11/07/08 || The Duff

I don’t know why, but ever since being blown away by Hour of Penance’s “The Vile Conception”, I decided to hunt down other people’s opinions that might help me realise the error of my ways for putting brutal death metal down so harshly as a pile of shit just as successfully as following up on “Kampfar’s review”: http://www.globaldomination.se/reviews/hour-of-penance-the-vile-conception. I began to troll around the SMN forums, expecting to blindly pursue some recommendations, as although this internet community supports deadweights such as Severed Savior, Decrepit Birth and Disgorge (US), it also shows interest in absolutely mind-blowing bands like Odious Mortem, Spawn of Possession, Psycroptic and the aforementioned Hour of Penance. UK’s Dead Beyond Buried was just one of many bands I decided to check up on by testing my luck, and I’m kicking myself for doing so, because this kind of shit is what label promotion is for.

My chief gripe with this album is that the music is entirely unmemorable. The riffs don’t so much gel with each other but rather run on from one another with zero thought put behind the song’s continuity – the riffs are actually pretty good for the most part, but you’d be hard-pressed not to randomly pick any death metal band out of a hat and find riffs of a similar quality yet arranged in a far more thoughtful manner; what these guys may well consider a step forward in the death metal world is in fact the same old shit arranged in an entirely non-invigorating way – music shouldn’t be written like this, ever. Add to this a vocalist who would be more suited to hardcore (think Mike DiSalvo, ex-Cryptopsy), some riffs that suit such a vocal style (much in the vein of Beneath the Massacre), and you’ve got some seriously annoying death metal in front of you. The saving graces are the production and upper-standard musicianship, but this isn’t overly technical material, and the only musician who seems to be pulling the band along to a technical capacity likely to be on par with the heavyweights who are truly responsible for the sub-genre’s advancement is drummer John Biscomb.

So overall, what is really aggravating about this effort is that it isn’t run-of-the-mill, no life complex tech/brutal death metal; there are some really great moments on the album, and overall the band has potential. It’s just that the complete lack of any structure and endless supply of riffs that have been strung together in a very non-enthralling manner gets really old by the second track, and I don’t want to waste any more of my time with the fucken thing. Had it been sent by a label, I’m sure I’d be less apathetic, but in the end there is fuck all going on here. Most frustratingly of all, I think Global Domination reviewed this fucker some time back, either in an Audio Autopsy or some past review now taken down, and I’m fairly certain it wasn’t liked. I know this would be ripped apart by any other member on staff, and it deserves to be; too many bands have upped the ante on death metal, and for a band like Dead Beyond Buried to be praised this day and age should be unheard of.

5 wastes of my hard-earned whoring money out of 10.

- Information
- Released: 2007
- Label: Siege of Amida Records
- Website: Dead Beyond Buried MySpace
- Band
- Oliver Marchand: vocals
- Simon Lee: bass
- Mike Lee: guitars
- John Biscomb: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Bow down or die
- 02. Condemned to misery
- 03. The aura of I
- 04. Until black death
- 05. Dissolution
- 06. Organic dementia
- 07. God is dead
- 08. Spear of longinus
- 09. Innocence erased
- 10. Life slowly tortured
- 11. Rape your kingdom
- 12. Dead
- 13. Skinned and bled