When listening to The Beast I can’t help but sit here and feel amazed that these guys have been around since 1986, but what I’m truly amazed by is that even after all of these years, after more than 10 studio releases the band still hasn’t really changed that much since they first began. If you’ve heard any one Vader release in the past 10 years, I can tell you, without you even needing to tell me which CD you’ve heard, that The Beast sounds exactly like it. Before you start calling me a psychic and sending me money, you should realize that Vader hasn’t changed. At all. The basic song structure has remained the same, throughout all of the line-up changes, the drumming is still generally one never-ending blast, the guitars still chug along with the same tone, and the vocals still sound constipated and there are still pointless wanky solos spread throughout for no real reason. The Beast is a bit slower, on the whole, than past releases, with a few tracks straying from the breakneck speeds and actually slowing down to a near crawl. The songwriting on this album is actually worse than on past releases. If Vader is death metal’s Slayer than The Beast is their Diabolus In Musica; a little different, and not in a good way. Listening to the album is more of a chore than a pleasure, but then again considering the band is rehashing the same riffs they came up with 18 years ago it’s not surprising their sound has gotten extremely stale and stagnant. The only real bright spot on this album is the drumming of session member Daray of Vesania who, technically, kicks, hits and smashes circles around the injured Doc. The only song on the release that caught my attention even for a moment was "The Zone", but that was short-lived, as a pointless solo weedly-weedly-wocka-wocka-woos it’s way through. Basically, if you’ve enjoyed Vader’s past 15 studio efforts, you’ll like this one. You’re probably also a very boring person with little to no imagination; no personality and you more than likely don’t bathe. If you got bored of Vader long ago, I congratulate you for escaping the never-ending cycle of monotony, and I guarantee you will find this to be even more boring than their other efforts. Like them or not, the only thing you can really say about these guys is they are determined and they are definitely consistent, even if it is just consistently mediocre.

Written By: Teufel