Review: Beyond Forgiveness “The Great Wall”

Beyond Forgiveness “The Great Wall”

Since I’m rather mindfucked with an ancient history, my the very first connotation after reading this title was Chinese construction which Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China, in 220 before Nazarene started to build – even if some fragments were existed even 500 years earlier. But I doubt lyric of tittle song has something to do with that or even more that this is concept album dealing with this topic.

Anyhow, BEYOND FORGIVENESS was formed in 2009 in not so big city located quite near to Colorado springs – Fountain. Of course (even if there’re the exceptions confirming the rule) that they released some stuffs earlier. By the way, ‘The Great Wall’ is debut full length of these girl and three guys. It contains ten quite long, except “Interlude”, songs of something what musicians call Symphonic/Gothic Metal. Well, in my orthodox opinion music of Americans has only sometimes to do with Metal. I mean, this is mostly calm, with quite huge participation of piano and so on. Besides, main vocalist, Talia, has rather sweet voice. She sings well from technical point of view, but there’s still no power in stricte Metal meaning. She also has some manner which is irritating and honestly technical mistake. Anyway, I noticed that since many years this manner is common for female vocalists and it doesn’t take only Metal, by the way. Fortunately in her case it doesn’t take place too often.

On the other hand this power is often in play of both Richard and Greg. Frankly I can’t see anything strange in that since they even longer play in Death Metal horde HELL’S EDEN. Riffs aren’t broken or fast here, but some number of them is somehow even brutal. Guys also take care about vocalizations from time to time. And contrary to Talia’s ones they use pure Death Metal growling. Sean beats variable and in middle tempo. This is interesting, by the way. There’s no speed-ups, but passages happen quite often. I also fell here some touch of Power Metal – subtle.

So fans of BEYOND FORGIVENESS list on their Facebook should be satisfied and like or maybe even love this stuff. And what bands I’m talking about? Well, just check out this! Actually if I was big fan of such playing I”d surely want to listen previous releases of Americans – especially ‘The Ferryman’s Shore’ which contains songs you’ll don’t find on album. Anyways, contrary to released only digitally “EP” (again my orthodox me is saying) ‘The Great Wall’ you’ll grab on CD.