Album Review: Beggar – Compelled To Repeat
Reviewed by Tim Finch
Hailing from our capital city, Beggar are an enigma. A band that refuses to be pigeon holed. Are they stoner rock? No, far too heavy for that. Are they doom? Well sort of, but its’s not a yes. Are they death metal? There are certainly elements of it but it’s not out and out death. Beggar won’t be categorised, they are who they are and their sound is unique.
Originally formed in Bristol and after migrating to London they have been on a growing rampage with a flurry of E.P. releases increasing their following and cementing their unique sound. This April the band release a full length album with the intention of breaking down those genre defining boundaries and proving a band doesn’t have to be pigeon holed to succeed.
Their new album, brought to us by APF Records, it entitled ‘Compelled to Repeat’ which refers to Freud’s Beyond The Pleasure Principle. The band comment “it refers to the principle in which he writes that the way that people process traumatic events or general bad shit is to repress it, but that it then surfaces periodically through a compulsion to repeat things in an involuntary means of working through that trauma.”
‘Blood Moon’ kicks off this angry affair, immediately highlighting the band’s sound, a cross of dark doom and death metal. It’s a ferocious yet oozes heavy, dank heaviness! ‘Anaesthete’ has a full on doom feel, the pace is slower, the feel in darker and then Charlie Davis’ vocals kick in and slap you around the face with its haunting rasp. ‘Trepanned Head Stares at the Sun’ starts as a lighter, almost stoner number, until the listener is battered by the brutality of the vocals and thunderous blast beats. This number in particular the most aggressive on the album pummelling out of you any reservations you may have had about the band or the recording.
The whole album is a melding of two styles; dank doom and blackened death metal. It’s anger and aggression combined with the melancholic dark doom and its beautiful! If 2020 and the current crisis in all of our lives is getting you down, look no further than Beggar’s ‘Compelled To Repeat’ for a new way to release your frustrations.
Beggar release ‘Compelled To Repeat’ via APF Records on April 3rd.
