An old-school death metal beast is born in Denmark in 2015. BAEST, literally the Danish word for beast or brute, release their debut-album ‘Danse Macabre’. They say fans of Bloodbath, Grave, Entombed and Dismember should give that record a chance. I like all of them, so, I was quite curious to listen to this album.
The record starts with “Crosswhore”, one of the previously released tracks. The lead melody and the following bass drum thunder as like as the half-time beat give the beginning of the track the special touch. It’s groovy and powerful at once, and makes a quite nice beginning of the record. The next track “Hecatomb“ increases the brutality. Mad riffs and sick vocals dominate the track, which is coated with nearly hymn-like parts as well as brutal blast beats. The mixture of the parts in the song is quite nice, again.
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Some rain and acoustic guitars lead into the title track “Danse Macabre”. It changes absolutely pain-free into a sick blast beat part. That’s the way at least I like it. This long song has an interesting suspensive curve: It’s fast and brutal, gets slower and groovier, and end up in mid-speed brutality. This is a very good track. “Atra Mors” does not set itself apart from the rest of the tracks, but contains a quite good guitar solo part and has interesting lyrics.
The next track “Messe Macabre” is similar in this aspect. It’s a good death metal song, but, in my opinion, nothing special overall. An instrumental track “Ritual” follows next and lead to a previously released track “Vortex”. This track is totally sick just from the beginning. The heavy blast parts at the beginning are a good base for the song. It has a wide spectrum of different riffs and beats in a well-chosen order. This track is one of my personal favorites.
After some sound samples, the last and longest track “Ego Te Absolvo” of the record starts. A good mixture of different kinds of riffs, beats and vocals makes this song a worthy end of the record. Blast beats, headbanging grooves, mighty lead guitars, nearly hymn-like parts, beastly vocals, everything unified in one track, again. Very awesome!
The record ‘Danse Macabre’ is a very nice album and an interesting one for any fans of death metal. The sound of the record is quite clear, brutal and blast minds for sure. I have not listened such a good sound of an old-school death metal record for a long time. The sound is quite sick, and mixed/mastered very well. At this point, I have nothing to criticize because it is a perfect polished old-school death metal sound. Most of the songs differ from each other due to riffs, beats and vocal style. This is quite nice, but there are some unspectacular songs, too. But that does not make this record bad, because it has a very sick beginning and ending in my opinion!
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The sound, the tracks as well as the mad lyrics and the big potential for headbanging make ‘Danse Macabre’ and BAEST highly recommended in general. The band has a high potential for writing awesome songs in the future, too. I am looking forward to seeing their tracks live on stage and see people headbanging their head to their music!