For my real, actual paying job, I do a fair bit of travel and on said travel, I meet some interesting folks. Some good, some bad, some eccentric. What has always been consistent is metal heads, when they identify each other in the wild, generally get along and have a good time. It’s just kind of rare to stumble across them at airports, hotels, bars, and Police conferences.

Now I have had a couple of cool interactions this year (usually propagated by a like-minded t-shirt)  such as a super cool salesman for Aslin Beer, the old-school Metallica fan I sat next to on a plane, the line cook at a hotel in Philadelphia who met Chuck Schuldiner and King Diamond, the cop who asked if the house band at a country bar in Nashville would be able to play a Dragoncorpse song or the Nu metal guitarist who grew up started his metal journey with Obituary. My most recent one was with a bartender by the name of Taylor Kincaid, at a British pub called Penny Lane in the metal-rich town of Richmond, Virginia.

After some conversation about his Deafheaven shirt, we started talking about metal in general, and it came out he was the vocalist in a band, and was getting ready to release a new EP, and that I attempted to write reviews for a third-rate blog. After checking out his prior EP, Scavenger, I told him to shoot me a copy of the new EP and I’d give it an honest review. So here it is.

Beggars play a form of burly discordant, brooding metallic hardcore in the vein of acts like  Converge (stated by Taylor as a clear primary influence), Advent, End, Blood Has Been Shed, and Celeste. It’s very well done and would have been a great on Equal Vision, Epitaph Records, or Ferrett Music in the early 00s.

Its got a big burly, dark tone, with lots of muscular, angular riffs with a staggering, jagged tone highlighted in the first of the four tracks ‘The Raven and the Wolf”.  Although there appears to be a little more injection of melody from the prior EP akin to a band Like Misery Signals as the final three songs on the EP, “Deceiver”, “Let Me Out” and “No One Will Know” show. Kincaid thas the requisite pained screams and bellows. The last track even has a little Southern swagger akin to He Is Legend or Maylene and the Sons of Disaster..

In all, a tasty, retro, blustery 14 minutes of DIY metallic hardcore for fans of the bands mentioned in the earlier paragraph. And Taylor was a cool dude too.

[Visit the band's website]

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