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Black Beach is a trio formed in 2012 in
Middleboro, Massachusetts, which eventually moved to Boston,
Massachusetts (also of course), and has already quite a discography as
they've released a couple of EPs (Play Loud, Die Vol 1
and
2) and two albums (Shallow Creatures
in 2016 and
Tapeworm
in 2019). Unfortunately I could not find much information about the
other musical activities Black Beach members might be involved in
but Ben, the bass player if I'm not mistaken, seems to be pretty
good at recording music.
I'm not going to go through the whole Black Beach discography,
you should check it out though, from what I've listened to it sounds
like some kind of grunge rock, which is cool but not cool enough to make
me spend hours on it.
So I'm just going to focus on their latest EP, which is quite unlike
the rest of their discography and you'll see why right below.
The Italian speakers and movie lovers among you know that Giallo means yellow but is also "the Italian term designating mystery fiction and thrillers. The term derives from a series of cheap paperback mystery and crime thriller novels with yellow covers that were popular in Italy." It later referred specifically to a "particular Italian thriller-horror movie genre that has mystery or detective elements and often contains slasher, crime fiction, psychological thriller, psychological horror, sexploitation, and, less frequently, supernatural horror elements." It's of course useless to add that it was cheap, rather fun, often erotic and that the apogee of the genre took place at the beginning of the 70s (blessed time of craziness and freedom, in many parts of western Europe at least). If you've heard of Dario Argento or Mario Bava you know what all that Wikipedia stuff means.
Last year lasted a couple of decades for many, the guys from
Black Beach are not exception and some of them spent a lot of time
watching Gialli and writing music in their dark bedrooms while the
world was on hold and that's how the Giallo EP idea was born! A
concept record? hum kind of, yes, the main very specific aspect of these
four songs being the absence of guitar and the movie soundtrack idea I
guess the "concept EP" term is not completely irrelevant. So you see why
that release sticks out in Black Beach discography now right?
Ok that being said, what does that bloody mean??
That translates into mostly bass-driven tracks with obsessive
electronic beats/loops and an atmosphere floating halfway between cold
industrial and noisy post-punk rock.
Laugh Riot painfully crawls through despair and
exhaustion, evoking a drugged-out character wandering aimlessly on
a cold, hostile and windy land while Traffic Jam keeps
playing with the edge between sanity and horror in a slightly
faster and more energetic atmosphere, a kind of chase, a hunt,
this time more than a stray, a desperate run to escape the
invisible but deadly danger that's out there somewhere and follows
relentlessly...
Bear Witness is a great example of a very successful obscene mix
of those industrial and noise-rock sounds, dragging us ruthlessly along a
tortuous and dark path whose meanders become ever darker and steeper and
culminate in a fierce run into the precipice...
Born Under A Bad Sign starts like an insane saxophone lullaby, a
bit like an old transistor radio driven crazy by the time that doesn't
pass as it should, a real disturbing instrumental track, perfect indeed
for a scary sequence of a genre movie.
I really enjoy these four tracks, Black Beach has beautifully
managed to create a sonic atmosphere which translates easily in
"fantasized" horror movie scenes but, don't get me wrong, they're not
at all pastiches of movie soundtracks either, these are great songs building a
cohesive whole made of of this kind of cold industrial noise-rock thing
that the band has created for this EP.
Who would have thought that Netflix and a pandemic would have
successfully turned grunge American bands into industrial acts obsessed
with cheap 70s Italian movies?
Keep going Mr.Virus!
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picture by
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N,J'Oi!
