Crashing down upon the frailty of firmament and raining shattered dregs toward the haplessly packed acolytes below Adelaide, Australia-based death metal quartet BEYOND MORTAL DREAMS aim for widespread decimation within the six pieces which comprise their latest EP release. In compaction of signature movement and via some exploratory pathways ‘Devastation Hymns‘ hits like a toppling wall of stone and fire wherein the suffocating blitz upon what lies below stretches and mounds into six points of sublime impact. Here their work serves more than addendum or extension as it bears precision brutality and classicism to suit their ways yet surprises throughout with smaller additions to and extensions of their celebrated ouevre.

Beyond Mortal Dreams are a long-standing institution of Australian death metal’s elite underground, one of just a few not only upholding the quality standard and severity of pace since their inception but surpassing themselves with each pass of the fire-blade. Formed circa 1992 as Suffering and smartly changing their name by 1995 the band wouldn’t officially get into gear with studio releases ’til the late 2000’s. I’d gone into great detail on the band’s history as perceived when reviewing their sophomore LP (‘Abomination of the Flames‘, 2022) and for the sake of immediate context I’d recommend revisiting that record nearby your exploration of this new chunk of songs. The short of it is that I admired their work alongside some of the best in terms of bands with a connection to the ways of early 90’s USDM with their own accelerant applied; In following up that second album the band intended to hammer right to the point, cinching the songs from this session down to ~4-5 minutes on average and compacting them with brutal and quick-witted pure death metal action.

Though this six song EP is substantial at over thirty minutes of music (with the cover song accounted for) it appears these sessions could’ve been considered a full-length to some degree. At least with consideration for the prompt for this release the band issued, a standalone single titled “Living Yet Dead“, which was reworked from the band’s Suffering years. It’d given a general idea of how the band’s new material would sound though it was a comparably ‘primitive’ piece in some sense. The sharper eared among us should hear some of the composer’s (esp. guitarist/vocalist Pahl Hodgson) everlasting tics and temperament through the resuscitated lens of that song and especially if stepping directly from it into “Fetid Beyond all Conception” on ‘Devastation Hymns‘, a far more complex yet similarly functional showing of force and fire. But before you’ll find yourself deep-seated in the gloom and groove of the mid-EP stretch and sucked into the vortices offered by “Predatory Dysmorphia” it’ll be the album opener “Arachnivore” that inducts all ears toward the explosive rapture of Beyond Mortal Dreams.

Chorales ring from the burning apex of their opening scene before a few whammy dives and a militant fire-blazoned riff calls the ear into the action. To me this reeks of the high standard presented by early 2000’s death metal adjacent to the furious press of brutal death metal extremity at the time. An ante-up beyond the late 90’s sting of faster, more precision drumming and many-stringed guitars offering an extra dimension of (manageable) lower end. This is both vital signature and to some degree the category where I’d set Beyond Mortal Dreams as a bridge between the early 90’s old school and intensifying brutality, something unreal compared to what came before but not unrelated to the death metal tradition (see also: Dead Congregation, Centurian, et al.) More importantly for we rhythm obsessed folks the bar is set high here in terms of the riff count and upheld throughout.

The finest point of interest here for my own taste comes with the draining alien touch of “Tormenting the Iniquitous” which first hits around ~49 seconds into the piece. This is one of the more experting examples of descending progression I’ve heard in quite some time and for the sake of it being sidled next to sprawling points of reveal and (more importantly) militant, machine-cut rhythms. This is probably the most Angelcorpse and Krisiun-era feeling portion of the record on some level and not only per their riffcraft but the crisp and ridiculously stamped presence of session drummer Henry Inglis (ex-Christ Dismembered) which naturally kicks those tendencies up a notch. Combine that piece with the band’s insane cover of Bay Area thrash metal legendry Forbidden‘s “Forbidden Evil” and I’m basically sold on the whole deal but we could take a closer look at some of what the band do differently on this EP which sparks a separate node of interest.

“Bred For Possession” in particular appears to be a tightly wound, groove driven piece and it ultimately is ’til ~1:47 minutes in where cleaner vocals and cacophonic layers of chorale present this strange hymnal aspect of the record at its loudest. Granted this moment is brief as the humming riffs and shredded-loose soloing that otherwise commands greater spectacle but the use of many vocal layers and the whopping deathmarch of a riff that develops beyond ~4:45 minutes in collectively feel like Beyond Mortal Dreams are reaching for something eerie and yet to be fully defined in this context. It isn’t the most direct-to-skull piece on the record and others use keys/choral vocals to some degree but it is an example of where the band excel when incorporating variation and skills beyond pure death metal extremity. The cover song likewise builds upon this point via its expanded vocal palette in the sense that it is cool to see what else these folks can do and how different ideas translate within their sound.

There was no certain expectation for these folks to have returned with new material so soon, at least when considering the ten year gap between their previous two major releases, and yet what arrives here is more than just up to par. ‘Devastation Hymns‘ could be mentioned alongside the best of pure death metal you’ll hear in 2025 and there are few bands who land anywhere near this standard in the realm of this style. Beyond that point I’d found this recording was maybe even more crisp than ‘Abomination in Flames‘ in some respects and really the only ding on my part is the combination AI generated/digitally modified artwork here which does admittedly look like an 80’s grimdark graphic novel spread at a glance but I don’t see the point of using AI for cover art, especially in relation to music that truly isn’t a cheap commodity or worthless in any sense. A very high recommendation.

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