Enough of that baby crap, here comes Benighted! They're a band from France that takes no prisoners. Benighted plays brutal death metal with grindcore influences. I don't think I can start this post properly without some music, so here we go...
Benighted is just a nonstop barrage of brutal noises. Now let me be the first to say that I don't listen to a lot of brutal death, or brutal variation of any genre to be honest, but Benighted just has something special. The vocalist is very talented and you can his three main vocal styles (deep growl, mid growl, scream) in almost every song. The band also likes to hide plenty of melody behind the brutality. Quite often I'll find myself tapping along to a catchy beat or the song will break down into something unexpected like the rapping in Grind Wit or jungle adventure section in Carnivore Sublime. If you don't believe me about the jungle adventure, listen to the song yourself and decide. The point is that there's thought behind the brutality. I've checked out plenty of other bands from the same genre and left disappointed because they just didn't have that special something that Benighted has.
As metalheads we often get the question "how do you understand what they're saying?". And the answer is usually "I've been listening to it for long enough to make out the words". Let me just say that I don't understand a damn word Benighted vocalist Julien Truchan is saying. I can make out a few words when he does his mid growl style, but otherwise I don't even know what language the vocals are in. Benighted has a few songs in french, and others that switch between english and french. Good luck.
That being said, the lyrics are actually pretty interesting. The majority of their songs deal with mental illness and of course being a death metal band it can get pretty dark and depraved. I do trust they know what they're talking about though as Mr. Truchan works in a psychiatric hospital and seems to have a genuine fascination with the subject.
I think the weirdest thing about that video is that the alien dude has a spacer. Only in one ear though.
Benighted is not a band without change. They've released seven albums and over time their style has changed a bit. For the first couple, they were a little more black metal influenced. That pretty much means that there was more screaming, the guitars were tuned differently and the quality was worse. There's also a pretty cool version of O Fortuna under the name Last Part of Humanity on their debut self-titled album. I also seem to have caught the band at a bad time as they currently only have three members. At least two of them (Julien Truchan and Oliver Gabriel) are original members and Kevin Foley rents himself out to other bands all the time so they're all not going anywhere.
If you want something heavy that still has a musical heart, look no further than Benighted. The French band knows how to pull out all the stops and how to do it in an interesting way. From the musicianship to the lyrics, there's more there than you'd initially think. And they don't look like they're leaving the scene anytime soon.
You can find Benighted at the following links:
http://brutalbenighted.com/
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