Beastwars: The Death Of All Things

Monstrous rumblings from the Land Of The Long White Cloud

Beastwars album

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Beastwars are big news in their native New Zealand and for good reason, given the sheer zeal and weight of their eponymous debut and follow-up Blood Becomes Fire.

The Death Of All Things proclaims itself to be the very definition of heavy, containing everything you expect from a band on the doomier end of the sludge metal spectrum, from earth-shaking riffs and rumbling basslines to drawn-out, unsettling melodic passages played through mauled amps caked in grime and rust. Vociferous opener Call To The Mountain is perhaps Beastwars’ most robust statement to date, while Holy Man builds to an imperious crescendo.

But while it’s an uncompromisingly bone-shaking affair, there’s plenty of guile to back up the gargantuan core. Devils Of Last Night isn’t afraid to break things down to a more delicate refrain, frontman Matt Hyde takes on the role of grizzled storyteller akin to Swans’ Michael Gira on the searching ideals of Some Sell Their Souls, while the blissful strings of the acoustic The Devil Took Her and affecting, reserved title track deliver an emotional clout as hefty as anything else on the album.

Adam Brennan

Rugby, Sean Bean and power ballad superfan Adam has been writing for Hammer since 2007, and has a bad habit of constructing sentences longer than most Dream Theater songs. Can usually be found cowering at the back of gigs in Bristol and Cardiff. Bruce Dickinson once called him a 'sad bastard'.