Begravement – Horrific Illusions Beckon Review

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the riffless hinterlands which have separated them from glory, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Metal and of Metal’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the celebration.

First of all, yes, “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” is a fairly precise antonym for “death metal.” But secondly, on this wonderful debut album, Minnesota’s Begravement hold several truths to be self-evident: not just that all people are created equal, but that they are created equally in need of hot licks and sweet riffs; not that all people are endowed with certain unalienable Riffs, but that they might enjoy some alienable ones too; not just that to secure these riffs, Guitars are instituted among People, but that these Guitars derive their just powers from the consent of the Guitared.

Hello, friends. Already I am doing what Begravement does not, because in terms of preliminaries, Horrific Illusions Beckon’s opening track “A Horrific Illusion” offers up exactly one (1) cymbal hit before diving headlong into four (4) minutes of absolute no-bullshittery death metal. And after that? Oh, just another fifty (50) minutes of absolute no-bullshittery death metal.

And yes, that is death metal with a capital EVERYTHING, because the one thing most clearly on display as Begravement whips through this opening full-length salvo is the band’s obvious love of death metal in all its idioms. Across these nine songs, you’ll find ripping death/thrash, melodeath, early technical death metal, progressive death metal, and more, all of it done with the twofold intent of A) demonstrating the band’s careful study of the genre’s greats and B) crystallizing those myriad influences into a unique and cohesive blueprint all their own.

Am I making this sound like hard work? Dear brothers and sisters, dear enemies and friends, this album is fuuuuuuuuuuun. Across Horrific Illusions Beckon, Begravement’s songwriting is consistently tremendous, with catchy riffs, repeated motifs, and complex structures that never feel like calculus homework. And although the guitar work from Ezra Blumenfeld and Owen Hiber often takes center stage, each instrument gets ample opportunity to step out and take the lead (like on the pummeling snare work from drummer Grady Westling on the midsection of “Stifling Excruciation”). Matt Schrampfer’s fretless bass often pops out to counterpoint the guitars or add a third melodic line, but his tone is mostly tight and frantic rather than overly elastic and ponytailed. 

Begravement’s style incorporates so many classic death metal touchstones from Death and Atheist to Morbid Angel and Pestilence. Sometimes they careen with the besotted dark energy of Tribulation’s The Horror, and at other times they (briefly) evoke the baroque melodeath of Edge of Sanity. You can clearly hear the DNA of classic Metallica, but there’s also early Opeth, early At the Gates, lots of Deceased, and perhaps some of a less flouncy Horrendous. In a way, though, the album that keeps coming to mind as I listen to Begravement is Decapitated’s Winds of Creation. Begravement doesn’t sound very much at all like that turbocharged Vader/Morbid Angel-styled debut, but in the band’s youth, their instrumental command and songwriting prowess, and the startling clarity of their vision, that’s the well I keep drinking from. Oh, and these cats are unsigned? COME ON ALREADY.

And the best part is, because of how fluidly these songs are written, there’s nothing that ever takes you out of the moment. Even though “Valley of Everlasting Darkness” sounds a little bit like Death circa Sound of Perseverance filtered through early Morbid Angel, it actually just mostly sounds like this young, hungry band finding cool shit that works in a rehearsal space, and then woodshedding the heck out of it until they wring every last ounce of possibility out of it. Blumenfeld’s vocals are another gem, hacked and spat out with a ton of variety – dipping into a Ross Dolan-like deep register, or grinning with disgustingly articulated Reifert-isms, a healthy dose of Martin van Drunen dryness, and some nearly black metal accent snarls.

But again and again, the album comes down to those goddamned self-evidenced truths: riffs and songwriting. Begravement works with tumbledown riffs and charge-ahead riffs, choppering riffs and whiplash riffs, twitchy-time tech riffs and galloping thrash riffs. And throughout each tightly composed song, they toss out little touches that sweeten the deal without gimmickry: pinch squeals, aggressively excellent ride cymbal, fretless bass cutouts, the light touch of theremin-like synth on “Intergalactic Espionage,” the Gothenburg-intro-by-way-of-a-Kirk-Hammet-solo instrumental “Revealed by Moonlight,” and on and on.

Always be suspicious of anyone claiming that such and such band is “saving [whatever].” Begravement is not saving death metal; a band like Begravement is living proof that death metal will never need saving. Death metal was created by people who wanted to play the fastest and coolest shit they could because it sounded excellent, so put that in your morally compromised pipe and smoke it, Jefferson.

Hit the lights, cut the shit, buy the record.