In a little less than a decade of existence, Ireland's God Alone might not have became a household name, given how The Beep Test was my first contact with them, but a closer back catalogue inspection does make for a pretty interesting case of each album having its very own nuance. What God Alone play could roughly be categorized as "post-everything", or as they call it themselves on their Bandcamp page: "dance infused math/noise rock", which is itself pretty accurate and a good representation of the fact that they're far from being run on the mill. Full length debut Poll Na MBrón felt like it had a bigger focus on the post-rock side. God Alone, though theoretically an EP while being over 30 minutes in runtime, pushed further on the post-metal side. ETC felt like a lighter version of that that focused on groovy math rock. So what nuance does that leave for The Beep Test?
First and foremost, while post-metal is and was a strong component of God Alone's sound, even at their most metal they were never unquestionably metal, hence why they also don't have a Metal-Archives profile. The Beep Test, while having some of that metallic element, a lot more of its heaviness comes from a punk side. If previous albums explored various suffixes for "post-", this one goes for post-hardcore, but it does so in a way that is in line with their history of mixing more sounds. Remember how they tagged themselves. Sure, the math part makes sense when considered as a continuation of ETC and the noise rock is a step removed from sludge metal which is a step removed from post-metal... but it's so riveting to hear the "dance" part as well.
There's more to God Alone than just what genres go into their mix, but hearing what feels like Death From Above 1979 in a more metallic context was not something that was on my bingo card. I don't think that's a sound that would work in any hands, and what God Alone do with it works because of how they take the groovy puzzle pieces and assemble them. While there isn't much unconventional in the structures of these songs, there's a certain chaos within each of them, as math rock gets pushed into mathcore and post-hardcore gets pushed into indie rock infused dance-punk.
For a 36 minutes album, The Beep Test is full of contrasting sounds and none of them sound disjointed. Wouldn't be surprised for a follow-up album to address the only remaining post piece of the puzzle by being "post-punk" nuanced.
