It’s rare I make any personal connections to any bands in this business as I deal mainly with PR and label folks. I may do an interview with a band, but that’s the last time I generally talk to them ever again. With a few exceptions (Tomer Pink from Subterranean Masquerade. Lord K from The Project Hate), most of the bigger bands seem content to get a review/interview and be done with me. I’m metal media whore apparently.

So when some kid from Florida starts IM’ing me and asks about the EP his band sent in on the digitalmetal message board. I took an interest. Seemingly naive about the repercussions of a bad review, the said member (Eliot -vocals) kept asking me what I thought of his bands’ independent effort and seemed genuinely interested in my thoughts on their effort, Well, Eliot just for you, here is your very own review in all its glory.

My honest verdict’ Not too shabby. (I know you heartless bastards out there were soooooo hoping for an ‘IT SUCKS DOUCHEBAG!!!!’, weren’t you? Admit it). Trust me, I would not hesitate to trash this is it were truly awful, but for a bunch of kids in Florida on the tiniest of labels, this 7 song EP is surprisingly proficient. The biggest hurdle for this band is their immediate ‘core’ association that will turn off 85% of metal heads sick of anything remotely related to metalcore nowadays. But even with their self promoted ‘core’ sound, Beauty In Chaos have rather heavy dose of their innate Floridian death metal thrown in. The end result is a band similar to the likes of Neaera, The Red Death, With Dead Hands Rising, Burning Skies, The Black Dahlia Murder, etc-the more death metal based form of metalcore. Even for the tiny label, the overall sound is pretty good, if not Eric Rachael, Alan Douches standards; it carries the burly death metal tinged metalcore sound adequately.
After the rather needless intro, ‘Breaking Ties’ saunters forth with our man Eliot displaying his solid deeper chops and typical screams amid a technically savvy mix of stout riffage and squealing harmonies. I’ve heard it thousands of times, but to their credit Beauty In Chaos actually stick. Something recent releases by the likes of Neaera and The Red Death were not able to do. ‘Your Demise’ shows off some proficient solo work from Chris and Alex, even if not done justice from the no doubt menial production budget. The six actual songs are all fairly strong examples of the genre, which if placed next to their big label contemporaries would hold up very well. Nothing groundbreaking or earth shattering, but a fine example of their chosen genre.
There are the usual pitfalls of the genre that the band falls into such as the acoustics and gang vocals of ‘Obituary Notice’, but in a pretty eyebrow raising turn of events. EP closer ‘Dead Gone and Missing’ uses the acoustic cliché to rather good effect with a rather impressive segue into a very solid mid paced riff before the band careens into the very capable Black Dahlia Murder-ish meat of the song. Overall, a pretty solid EP worth looking into if you are a devout metalcore fan.
There you have it Eliot, bask in the light of this review and get to work on a full length, hopefully on a bigger label, before the genre fades like a oversaturated dying star.

[Visit the band's website]

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