This is another one of those albums that should prompt a ‘five listens minimum’ guideline for music reviewers. Upon initial listens, Beloved just appears to be very much regulation metalcore, with all its chuggy riffs, thrashier moments, fat breakdowns and clean/dirty vocal tradeoff. It will certainly appeal to the everyday, garden variety metalcore fan.
Delve a little deeper however, and a little more nuance and uniqueness becomes apparent. A subtle but strong use of orchestration goes almost unnoticed on first listens, but ultimately lends the album very welcome atmospherics and variation. The presence of the great Byron ‘Speed’ Strid, lending his clean vocals to the bruising but melodic Calvert Street (as well as some ‘additional production’), is very easy to take. I rarely check album credits before I listen to a record, preferring to experience it completely unencumbered by this type of information, so this was a very pleasant surprise.
This is also one of those albums where, you listen end to end several times, it may start strongly, finish strongly, but tracks around the six to eight mark get a little ‘lost’, or go relatively unnoticed for a while. Then you realise that track seven, or something in that region, is actually one of the strongest songs on the record. Such is the case here. ‘Kjaerlighet’ is slower, even ballad-esque in places. However, it is subtly powerful, and features the aforementioned symphonic elements to greatest effect.
This is very high quality Aussie metalcore, get into it.
7/10
Reviewer: Rod Whitfield