This Melbourne hardcore band has been around for a while. Beyond the Floor is Geld’s second album and the first of their records I’ve given a proper listen. When I first heard this band superficially I lumped them in with the likes of Hoax, Gag and the Lowest Form, bands I was never a big fan of. Soundwise these are not bad points of reference. Like these groups Geld’s sound is noisy, dark and aggressive. The vocals remind me of Never Healed and black metal bands: gnarly, venomous and impossible to understand. Fortunately there’s a lyric sheet included. The lyrics are haiku-like, short and to the point. When riffing the guitar sounds more or less like an incessant hiss – sorry, my knowledge of pedals is absent, but short howling and ugly solos are thrown in here and there. Feedback is not shunned. The bass player does more than just support the guitar riffing. The bass lines walk the scales and when the four string gets a moment to itself, it claims your attention like a punch in the face.
The pace of these 10 songs is generally high and the vibe is very aggressive. Geld does slow down occasionally. Sometimes to lay down a moshable riff, other times to extend a track with either a mean outro like on ‘Prisoner and Guard’ or an almost pensive one like on ‘Gedankenfleisch’ and ‘Low A.G.’. The change of accentuates the record dynamic and interesting. I’d argue a contemporary hardcore band needs to switch things up like this to make an album worthwhile. Perhaps Beyond the Floor’s main appeal is how well the record is able to create this dark atmosphere. It pulls you into a world of negativity, ugliness, depression, anxiety, anger, bad trips on bad drugs. Who ever said these were happy times, indeed!? Of course these topics have been covered before, maybe you know them up close and personally. Geld however gives a take on it all that’s very much their own. That alone makes this a hardcore record worth your ear.
Hear the thing here: https://staticshockrecords.bandcamp.com/album/beyond-the-floor.
