Nightfly Must admit to never having come across Beneath The Massacre before. Fearmonger is the fourth album from these Canadian technical death metallers. It’s a sub-genre where I have my favourites like Nile and Death but a lot of it can leave me cold despite the obvious virtuosic musicianship on show which I do enjoy.

Beneath The Massacre fall into the category of bands I admire rather than love, though there’s songs where I did enjoy it. It’s pretty much as I was expecting - Fantastic musicianship, drums that are a blur of blast beats and lightning speed double kicks and fills. Guitar parts that are for the most part a blur of notes and vocals that are of the deep guttural growl variety. Beneath The Massacre do this stuff as well as most bands of their ilk but also suffer from the lack of memorable songs where technique takes precedence over a great riff that I often find with the sub-genre. None of the songs outstay their welcome though with most around the three minute mark or less and with a total running time of just under thirty minutes it’s the perfect length. They do slow things down occasionally and when they do it’s very welcome and they can get quite inventive with it locking into a less complex syncopated groove for a while. The guitar solos are also impressive, even adding a touch of melody here and there. With death metal I generally prefer the production dirtier and on the organic side. Here as is common with this sort of stuff, it’s very clinical but nevertheless clear and powerful.

If this is your type of thing then I can recommend you check Fearmonger out, you may well love it. I warmed to it myself with a few plays and they really nail it at times, favourites probably being Treacherous and Tarnished Legacy which closes the album in fine style capturing them at their most inventive. For myself I’d probably rate it three stars but within the confines of the sub-genre they don’t do much wrong so it’s 3 and half.