Benea Reach comes from the depths of Norway and have just released their first full length debut upon humanity. Benea Reach describes their music as both a punch in the face and a stroke against the fur. Well I can tell you that Monument Beneothan is not just another metalcore album.

 

Monument Beneothan starts with ‘Ground Slayer’ and immediately the special experimental metalcore pulls the attention. During the first song of the album ,’Ground Slayer’, Benea Reach grabs my attention because this song lasts for almost 6 minutes. During those six minutes I got several different impressions about Benea Reach. At one point the typical Mastodon riffs are pushing the song ahead and at another point the song sounds very fragile and emotional. So you can say Benea Reach combines those two extreme parts.

 

On the contrary, with many standard metalcore bands the vocals are many times very overshadowed by the rest of the music. This has on several songs the effect that the vocals become more and more some sort of instrument instead of just the vocals. The fact that the moans and groans of the vocalist come right out of the depth of his soul do contribute to this.

 

During songs like ‘Inheritor’ and ‘Transmitter’ several names are crossing my mind. A bit of Meshuggah, Tool, The Dillinger Escape Plan, ZAO and probably a dozen more bands. But being compared with all these great names doesn’t have to be necessarily be good for a band. As for Benea Reach it doesn’t turn out that well. Sometimes I have the impression there’s completely no soul within the song and they been too busy to absorb all different sorts of influences within that song.

 

Overall Benea Reach has made a rather special album which is loaded with a sort of experimental, emotional metalcore which is probably one you will like or one you will hate, there’s no in between. As for me I got rather irritated by the vocals of the vocalist. And please if you put an outro on the album don’t put 4 minutes at the end of a song and start another song after that with mostly the same kind of boring keyboard tunes.