Album Review: Beggar – Compelled To Repeat (APF Records)

Emerging from the nihilistic quagmire of London, four-piece Beggar propound a kind of sludge-meets-extreme-metal pandemic of tar thick riffs and groove, blasts, emotional vocal discharge and genre-bending brutality.

Not so much unleashing their album as hurling it in frustration into the faces of the general public, the band release their debut Compelled To Repeat on April 3rd 2020 via APF Records.

Discussing the title of the album, the band comments:

The album title, Compelled To Repeat, refers to Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle in which he writes that the way that people process traumatic events or general bad shit is to repress it, but that it then surfaces periodically through a compulsion to repeat things in an involuntary means of working through that trauma. We also use this idea to refer to other compulsions to repeat that people experience in their daily lives (addiction, church, office work, Britain’s nostalgia for Empire, everyone’s daily commute…).

One of 2020’s most anticipated releases, Beggar have been kicking ass up and down the country for a while now and it’s finally time for the release of their debut. A musical version of the word ‘fuming’ albeit with a shit-ton of doomy groove and metal head-bangers.

Aggressively heavy but with a twinkle in their eye, Beggar get us started down the path of Compelled to Repeat with Blood Moon. The riffs are like treacle being poured into the ears and the vocals, the finger jamming it all in deeper. Slow and methodical at times then at others frantic and harsh, it’s a grand start.

The bar set, it’s now all about keeping it high which Beggar easily do with the roaring ferociousness of Anaesthete and The Cadaver Speaks. Before Black Cloud lays the doomier side of Beggar on thickly, spreading the gloomy heaviness all over like a choking paste.

The melodic twang throughout Trepanned Head Stares at the Sun is welcome although it’s still a track focused on the heavy side of things overall. A very brief intermission with Custody of the Eyes allows time to take a breath before diving straight into the brutal frankness of Tenantless of the Graves and the savage doomy bog of Matryoshka Brain. Beggar at their most taxing and their most concentrated.

This exceptional release culminates in the most capacious track of the album where Beggar show off just how much more they have in the tank. Even when busting out something as detailed and as hefty as this, the title track.

If there was any pressure on Beggar going into this album, you’d never know it as they’ve nailed their debut.

Beggar – Compelled To Repeat Full Track Listing:

1. Blood Moon
2. Anaesthete
3. The Cadaver Speaks
4. Black Cloud
5. Trepanned Head Stares at the Sun
6. Custody of the Eyes
7. Tenantless the Graves
8. Matryoshka Brain
9. Compelled to Repeat

Links

Facebook | Bandcamp | Instagram | APF Records