Times of wonder are not yet over! When you think you've heard it all, round the corner comes a beast you've never seen or heard of before. This is the case between me and One Step Beyond (OSB from now on). But that's not really a wonder itself, as the band hails from another side of globe. In fact, have hailed already for a decade this year.

Amalgamation of metal and funk is nothing new. But that's not all, folks, as the band themselves list "a few" more influences of what their music consist of: grind, rock, dub, reggae, funk, jazz, thrash, ska, punk, industrial and hip hop. Yes, there's evil words "hip" and "hop" included, but fret not, because One Step Beyond are much, much more than Anthrax fucking with Public Enemy. When annexing extreme forms of metal with this other rumbustious form of music, the result can be rather devastating, but this time in a positive way. What I hear in OSB are such bands as Primus and Prong mixed with death metal elements (mad murder metallers Macabre for instance), but OSB have turned it all to sound of their own. All this quirkiness is surprisingly entertaining, unlike majority of this kind stuff (I mean crossover metal bands generally, because there's no other like OSB). It's easy for the bands akin to this go way too far and forget about songs. There's insane bursts, slower easier songs and beautiful ethereal instrumentals. Just take a listen to songs found on the band's websites, and you get a much, much better picture! I think vocals could've also been more varying, as now it's only raspy high-pitched growl and some lower grunting. But that's one of those extreme metal elements for you.

Bass and guitar sound excellent. The drum machine programming is good, but it's clear where the beats come from. The band need a flesh 'n' blood drummer, because the style of their music. It is just too lively to be computerized. Everything can be heard, which is very important when listening to this kind of music. Low end could be heavier, but this is just another fault caused by the drum machine.

Lyrics are just as much varied as the music itself. These lines perfectly picture the range of thought of OSB and what they've made on 'Beyond Good and Evil': "Fuck 'em all, Sony, Warner, suck our dicks, we've burnt all your shit. Metallica's little pricks, turned out by corporate pimps who control their heroin, they are puppets with fists up them." As the final word I'd like to point out for all of those who think that this kind of mixing of different styles of music will kill metal music is wrong, because in reality those millions of shitty bands who just copycat old stuff and do it very, very badly are a much bigger threat to metal music's health. It is your choice, if you pick up this specimen of skill or the latest tape-recorded black metal hiss.

Rating: 6 (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
10/19/2007 12:05