BEES MADE HONEY IN THE VEIN TREE – In Between Strides
Release Date: 18th September 2026
Label: Magnetic Eye Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Shoegaze, Rock, Alternative, Post-Rock, Psychedelic Doom.
FFO: King Buffalo, Elephant Tree, Elder.
Review By: Jeff Finch
Disclaimer: after listening to this album in its entirety, it’s safe to say I am not its intended audience. Kind of.
Just jumping right into things, one item that’s irrefutable is the talent this band possesses; intricate guitar melodies, superb transitional arrangements, and intriguing drum fills and rhythms, all of it coalesces into a soundscape that might be the equivalent of feeling the ocean breeze and hearing the water crash into the sand, all while checking behind your back to see if anything is coming. Because while the band is very progressive and shoegazey, some of the transitions are such that the build-up does not match the expectation, which can be jarring but also a reminder to never assume where a band is going, and that’s where these gents succeed in spades.
On opening track Departure, about halfway through the song, there is this intense build-up that has me thinking the music was going to take a turn for the heavy but instead just built to a crescendo then floated back down to its original rhythm and tone, jazzy prog rock with shoegaze vocals. Not bad in any capacity, in fact quite the contrary, the musicianship is more than enough to keep listeners glued even if it kind of meanders and doesn’t really DO anything. Meanwhile, Respite is a four-minute instrumental track that, while again showcases the groups songwriting chops, is quite frankly a bit of a bore, with nothing contained therein to latch onto, effectively acting as a rather lengthy interlude. Along those same lines is penultimate track Elisa, only this time the track is over 9 minutes and really doesn’t have a reason to be that way. Sure, the piano coupled with the rhythmic sounds of the drumming and guitar feedback is soothing towards the end of the track, but most of the track is just ambiance building up to nothing. It had basically shut me off until Return, Precipice started, and here’s the “kind of” from earlier. Simply put, this track is pure sludgey, doom goodness, so many stankface riffs, inclusion of well executed harsh vocals, tortured in a way, and a pace that, while not quite uptempo, makes the rest of the album sound like funeral doom in its execution. The track does the usual build-up but around the 1:30 mark, it just feels different from the rest of the album. The guitars explode into crushing noise, vocals mixed behind everything else (a perfect shoegaze approach), and I’d swear this is an entirely different band. Tortured shrieks pepper the speakers as the song reaches its conclusion, sounding quite similar to the blackened doom band Graves at Sea, which was completely out of left field and something I needed more of.
While definitely a roller coaster of sounds and melodies and build-ups, this album suffers from length issues: the songs are too long for the music put forth to justify its runtime. When 40% of the tracks are purely instrumental, taking up roughly one third of the runtime, they’d better be interesting. They weren’t, but what saves the album, apart from the final track being a punishingly heavy doom track, is the undeniable talent of its members. The band may not be my cup of tea, but do not let me discourage anyone from listening: they at least deserve to be heard and an opinion formed thereafter.
(3 / 5)
