Beyond the Sixth Seal – The Resurrection of Everything Tough

(Metal Blade Records, 2007, 13 tracks, 55 minutes, 55 seconds, by Adam McAuley)

Impressively crushing sounding metal that has a distinctly heavy feel to it is what Beyond the Sixth Seal deliver effectively. They deliver a heavy metal platter that has an emphasis on bringing the modern heaviness aspect to the forefront, with even a hardcore vibe present. A somewhat melodic slant is added to the proceedings as well to give it a catchiness, but the album attempts to crush with its heaviness at most points.

The band are somewhat difficult to classify as they just crush along, but they bring enough hooks to catch your attention. A rather booming sound is emphasized greatly throughout which manages to hold you in thrall. Beyond the Sixth Seal comes across as a band that wants to throw massive riffs at you to enrapture you with their hugeness.

As such we’re left with an album that is difficult to characterize because it has a hardcore element, but it also has strong shades of straightforward heavy metal as well as melodic death metal. This un-classifiability makes you want to appreciate the band on many levels as they never fail to excite greatly.

The ability to entertain is a key to maintaining the fun pacing Beyond the Sixth Seal are able to convey throughout. They chug along quickly and vehemently to create a wave of emotion that captures you. This characteristic is quite a way of capturing your interest in the band despite the initial unfamiliarity.

The performances on the disc are tight and crushing sounding enough, with a penchant for adding a melodic standpoint to the proceedings. The guitars sound sort of hardcore in nature, though there’s nods to traditional metal and even melodic death like metal to be found throughout. The performances perk your interest in the band further.

Otherwise, the band have enough to distinguish them from bands within the genres they try operate under and the groovy nature would be suitable for many types of music, though they are able to craft their own distinctive style around it so that Beyond the Sixth Seal have a singularity to their performances.

Lyrically, we can see the band pushing themselves in a direction convenient to them. The fifth track, “Stricken”, tells of how people might fear them and this goes towards a similar tone of them wanting to find their own space within the metal realm quite effectively.

Overall, The Resurrection of Everything Tough is a strong album that brings massive waves of riff energy to the table. They clearly have some hardcore tendencies as well as those of the melodic death metal and traditional genres, but the exact frequency of the band seems to be to want to be as fun as possible. Recommended to any metal fan with an open mind.