Blightstrider
In Pain (TYSA Remix)
Torn (Decay Remix)

Only the hushed remnants of memories remain on a blasted planet, they drip like liquid into vast and empty buildings, crusted in the choke of decay. ‘Blightstrider’ is the first sign of something not yet fully Beyond here, and even the artist admits this release is something quite removed from the desolate drifts of solemn ambience; here noise reigns, excoriating dead landscapes in soundscape. From ‘Blightstriders’ simmering buzz, ‘In Pain (TYSA remix)’ truly stakes its strident obliqued antithesis to earlier Beyond work with its sawing of glass to and fro. It is like the sharpening of an axe, which only gets louder and more fervid, that the world shall soon feel in ‘Torn (decay remix)’. Death comes in an obliterating barrage of shuddering noise punctuating with regular bending sine tones. Noise fragments into cycling schizophrenia that is barely held in check by the relentless onslaught, frequently taken over into high-pitched feedback scream.

While only clocking in at thirty minutes this is a welcome broadening of Beyond’s work while retaining the husks of desolation and faint poignant strains of melody of previous releases.

A limited edition of sixty, this album is released in a slim DVD package with black and white – mostly black – minimal design.

NYR