Where they from? Oslo, Norway. According to Wikipeida, the city now known as Oslo was originally called “Kristiania” in the late 19th century but had it’s name officially changed in 1925. An ECA International survey conducted in 2011 found that Oslo is the second most expensive city in terms of living expenses in the entire world, only behind Tokyo. Also, May Ham is from there, or something, idk.
What do they sound like? It is true folly to compare this group to anyone else.
Why the hype? WARNING: serious gushing ahead. A few months ago I ran out of bands with new albums that I could write about for this series and genuinely considered writing about this band even though their last release was all the way back in 2015. I JUST LOVE THEM THAT MUCH! So, I was very pleased when I saw that they were releasing a new album on Christmas Eve this year, thus providing me with the chance to nerdsterbate for several paragraphs about how much I love them.
Every element about this band is incredibly unique, a characteristic often sorely lacking in the realm of grind and powerviolence. For me, it all starts with the guitar tone, which eschews the typical distortion and simply relies on reverb, downtuned strings and a hefty jangle to make every riff endlessly creative and expressive. I guess if I had to make a comparison to any band I would say BTD sound like hyper-obscure dutch grindcore band *Asterisk, but with more realized songs.
That’s one of the other defining elements of this band, that they consistently conjure passages that aren’t afraid to wander into the realms of things like mathcore, melodic black metal, sci-fi death and nu metal (YES, NU METAL) to create a brand of grindcore that is endlessly surprising, irreverent and Bungle-esque (YES, BUNGLE-ESQUE).
Latest Release: “Agronomicon.” Their newest album picks up right where they left of with 2015’s “Unplugged,” a fresh batch of art-grind that’s equal parts absurdist, zany, heavy and memorable (YES, MEMORABLE). They’ve somehow made their melodic passages even catchier this time around and the Korn parts even more “jumpdafuckup”-ish.
Favorite Track: There are so many bangers on this new one but I’ve narrowed it down to two: “Extremely Run To The Hills” has my favorite melodic passage theme on the album but album closer “Eternal Punished Septic” ends with the best Nu Metal slam of the album. Just listen toboth, ya dingus.
Find Beaten to Death on Bandcamp.
