ONE STEP BEYOND „Life Imitates Art”

Fuck me! What an album!?

“Originality through diversity” – that's what One Step Beyond claim. So it would be appropriate to think for a while whether both elements of this statement are really present in their music. Let's start with diversity. Well, the band certainly has it. If anyone had an urge to deepen into the structure of the music – song by song – it would appear that almost every piece stands for a different style or at least differs a lot from other ones. However we can point out some common features.

So, we have few songs which represent thrash/death, but with many influences. Cropsy (thrash plus grind plus crossover in D.R.I. style), Rockstar (thrash somehow like Testament), Disillusioned Friend (elements of hard core plus unfortunately something like nu-metal), Psycho Sexual (I guess the strongest one on the album, the mixture of thrash & death & grind, stronger than death itself), The Beyond (Pantera-like thrash, fucked up), The Game (really fucked up song which contains elements of black and grind, very strange and frightening) and finally Chaos Engine (the mixture of punk and hard core and grind).

What else? We have a weird song Forecast, an instrumental one. We have Infinite Illusion – dub reggae.. Really, with grind vocals… Prelude is something electronic, a keyboard small piece. Thoughts Lost To Time – in the mood of Type O Negative, a lot of gothic space.

One Step Beyond is a really weird mixture of different, sometimes completely far influences. Though one can surely say that Life Imitates Art is metal music, one can hear many influences by other styles. Justine Wood's vocal is something that makes the music recognizable – he growls all the time, even if reggae is being played in the background, which sometimes has co(s)mic results.

If there originality in this diversity? I say, there is. Fortunately the band managed to avoid the most common sin which may appear while joining different musical styles: the sin of diversity which brings nothing but mixing styles. Maybe it's the matter of vocals or the mood in general, but I perceive One Step Beyond's music as something frank and original.

At the same time it isn't an easy – or nice – music. I'm afraid there are no commercial opportunities ahead of them. But it doesn't matter – the important is that the band proposes fresh, original music which you wouldn't hear anywhere else. I strongly recommend it!

note: 5/5