Beyond the Styx is back to the fight with a new album.
Since 2010, the band composed of Emile Duputie (vocals), Arnaud Morfoisse (guitar/vocals), David Govindin (guitar/vocals), Yoann Cesar (bass/vocals) and Adrien Joulin (drums) hammers the Hardcore scene. Sentence, their new album, is out at the beginning of 2022.
The album begins with the raw rage of DC, a song that immediately sets the basis: the band is here to fight. A pure and very hooking Hardcore topped by the singer’s visceral screams, but also motivating breaks, just like on the energetic Collateral which sometomes offers dissonant tones into its effective and aggressive riffs. The band uses this heaviness which will make crowds move before welcoming Luis Ifer (Teething) on New World Disorder, a short song which comes back to the roots of this federative and violent style. Backing vocals coupled to jerky riffs will probably be enjoyed by mosh lovers, just like on ESC XIX and its very groovy Thrash influences, echoing to the explosive sonorities but also to those screaming leads. You probably want to enter the crowd before the end of the song, but also with Self Hatred, a composition which borrows to a slow and weighing Beatdown, as well as to abrasive melodies, then Chain of Life briefly allows us to breathe with this mysterious introduction. Violence quickly surfaces into those jerky riffs which will accelerate to offer hooking elements, and then Overload suddenly releases the pressure in less than two minutes. No dead time, only mastered energy before Guillaume D. (Final Shodown, Happy Face) joins the band for Scorch AD. Once again, the introduction allows us to breathe before flooding us under double kick, howlings and the as heavy as effective rhythmic. Moshparts chain under the duo’s screams while leaving place to some piercing leads, then the band continues with Machination, a composition with highly dissonant riffs. Disturbing harmonics are legion into the song, but the album ends with Cyclops, a song accompanied by Vincent Peignart-Mancini (The Butcher’s Rodeo, ex-Aqme) which makes the band place slightly more complex elements while staying in this dynamic of pure effectiveness and hooking groove.
With Beyond the Styx, it is impossible not to want to rush to a boiling crowd. Every composition in Sentence is shaped for mosh and headbang, but above all to be played on stage to offer a real unfurling wave of raw energy.
85/100