At the end of 2016 the US metallers of Narcotic stopped after their four years of existence. Around one year later guitarist Jason Geist formed a new band together with Discarnate’s vocalist Matthew Maggio, called Beastlurker. In Beastlurker Matthew Maggio not only delivers vocals, but also is drumming. Beastlurker’s line-up was completed with bass player Steve Boersma, who already worked with Jason Geist in Narcotic. Recently Beastlurker released their debut EP, titled Sanguine Elixir of Psychotropic Divination.
Opener Caustic Purgatorial Suspension starts dark, mysterious and somewhat symphonic, including a nice up-building effect, partly due to the marching-like drums. Due to this you immediately get in the right vibe in terms of darkness, but in terms of heaviness this part isn’t that representative, which of course also is quite logic when speaking about an intro. After that intro Beastlurker pounds very heavily with their black/death metal.
They do so with heavily pounding drums, in a somewhat jumpy way, such as in Lachrymatory and the second half of Nest of Squalor, as well as in a more blastbeat-like way, such as in Caustic Purgatorial Suspension and, again, in Lachrymatory. When speaking about the drums on this EP, the last half of this EP, the two songs Judas Goat and Nest of Squalor, seem to have a bit more variation compared to the first two songs, Caustic Purgatorial Suspension and Lachrymatory.
Since we are already speaking about drummer/vocalist Matthew Maggio, let’s say something about his other activity in Beastlurker, his vocals. He mainly delivers screams, that are a bit in the background, but that only adds to the darkness of Beastlurker’s music, with Judas Goat being the highlight song in terms of those screams. In Judas Goat, as well as in Nest of Squalor, he also delivers some grunts. There’s one other specific moment concerning the vocals that I can’t leave unmentioned and that’s the nice, creepy laugh at the end of Lachrymatory.
The only parts that we haven’t talked about yet are the bass and guitar, with the bass not standing out that much, except for the nice bass line halfway in Nest of Squalor.
Speaking about the guitar parts we’ll hear various executions on this Sanguine Elixir of Psychotropic Divination. For example in Lachrymatory and Judas Goat we’ll regularly hear chuggy guitars, while Jason Geist creates an atmospheric vibe with his guitar in Caustic Purgatorial Suspension and Judas Goat. In Judas Goat and Nest of Squalor we’ll also hear nice, lingering guitars and Jason also performs two great solo’s in Caustic Purgatorial Suspension and Judas Goat.
Beastlurker delivers 21 minutes of nice black/death metal that completely gets you in darker vibes on their debut EP Sanguine Elixir of Psychotropic Divination, with also showing quite some variation in those 21 minutes without exaggerating. A nice EP, especially for a debut!
Hi!
I’m Tim van Velthuysen and I started DutchMetalManiac back in 2014. I’m 29 years old and I live in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Of course, I like metal, but I can also appreciate other musical styles.
In addition to DutchMetalManiac I also have a personal website on which I’ll post various things that won’t fit on DutchMetalManiac, but might be interesting for you as well. It’s in Dutch though.
