Review: Grim Deeds – “Only the Beast III”

Outloud! Records, 1 July 2021

Grim Deeds plays well with others on Only the Beast III.

So I’m kinda getting lucky with the good stuff recently.  Just in the past week or so, I’ve had the good fortune to check out the VonErichs wrestling-themed tour de force and the new and brief melodic gold from The Blendours.  Now, I have a brand new 16-song record from the indefatigable Grim Deeds.  Things are looking up around here.

Only The Beast III is a Grim Deeds record, but with the now familiar Only The Beast twist.  Like the previous incarnations (Only The Beast and Only The Beast Too), Deeds is joined by the “metal Midas touch” of Cederick Forsberg, who recorded all the instruments and mixed and mastered the album.  And if you know Deeds stuff, you know you’re gonna get the goods.  Throughout III, Deeds skates through pop punk goodness, throws up devil horns with metal touchstones, glares through the dust with spaghetti western guitars, and spacewalks with alien synths.  All the while, he spills his guts with heart-on-sleeve sincerity and insightful observations that make for some of my favorite words in music today.

So let’s start with some of my favorite pop punk stuff from III.  The back-to-back songs “It Sucks To Be An Adult” and “Shithole Town” get by with great melodic guitar riffs and rattling bass.  The chorus on “It Sucks” is a poppy hookfest with a great vocal melody as Deeds sings the title while the vocal go on “Shithole Town” sticks to my brain like glue, with the attachment strong on the verse and getting even stronger on the chorus.  “Fucked Up Dreams” works with a fast Ramones-aping riff and maybe my favorite opening couplet on the record, “Now I lay me down to sleep, in my head the nightmares creep, soon they’ll overtake my resting brain”, sung in a hooky cadence.  And “Life Is A Nightmare” has fantastic melodic burst on both the bridge and the chorus.  Near the end, one of the hardest hitters is “Dear David Jones”, a paean to deceased Enemy You frontman David Jones.  The song is co-written by Deeds and Kody Templeman of Lillingtons/Teenage Bottlerocket and the shared vocals complement each other just right.  The chorus has a heck ton of hooks and the lyrics are positively heartfelt.  It even has an echoing/reverbed fade-out that fits and that I can get behind (and I don’t usually like fade-outs).  This is genuine and hard-landing pop punk of the first degree.  

Other III stuff throws some curves.  “My Unicorn” has battering ram drums and rhythmic guitar hooks.  The melody has some dark vibes to it and when the chorus goes big, it reminds me of a sort of punk approximation of Iron Maiden.  Opener “Fucked Up World” also has a metal touch in the smoking guitar lead and end-of-humanity fixation.  “Dead Grandpa” is punk rock…with whistling?  I guess so, but it works.  Same with the completely western guitar flourishes that pop up throughout the song while Deeds rants a tale of generational decline and diminishing returns.  Closer “My Destiny” has a heavy riff and some of my favorite vocal angst on the record.  And swaddled into the final quarter of the record, “Everyone Was a Baby” is a straight pop song with lots of 60’s-inspired melodic turns and gorgeously catchy back vocals.  And the lyrics are at once innocent and real and considered, with lines like “everyone was a baby, before long we are judged and reality tears us apart” making me smile a bit at the opening realization and tear up as the line closes out.  As with most Deeds stuff, forget genre signifiers and just appreciate the songs and “get-real” words that make this music great.

Only the Beast III brings all the Grim Deeds goodness to the table.  Great song structures and music, “you-can’t-say-that” consciousness exploration and sincerity, and melodies and hooks.  The songs stick to my brain like glue and inspire me to get to work.  He’s got the goods…he always seems to.  Don’t turn your back on this one.

Favorite song: “Shithole Town”

Favorite moment: I dunno, either the surprise appearance of spaghetti western guitars on “Dead Grandpa” or the out-of-this-world alien synths on “My Destiny”

Favorite whatever else: the vocal interplay and sincerity between Deeds and Kody on “Dear David Jones”

Favorite whatever whatever else else: the cover art done by none other than TGEFM’s very own Jeff Sorley; positively fantastic

Disclaimer – The cover art on Only The Beast III was done by TGEFM’s head editor Jeff Sorley