"Beyond Ruthless Cold" is the debut album of WRATH FROM ABOVE, formed in 2015 in Nantes, France. They are described by their label Apathia Records as a "war-themed black metal band," which, as you'll discover listening to the album, is not the same as a "war metal" band. They don't have the raw anger or messy sound production usually demanded from the genre and seen in groups like Blood Revolt, Diocletian, Revenge or Truppensturm. Indeed, the production is much more in the modern black metal style. The producer did an excellent job making the riffs sound as good as possible, framing the album in a cold, sharp and jangly tone that perfectly suits the music. Unfortunately, the songs themselves don't live up to the sound. The riffs are technically serviceable, but almost none of them are memorable. The songs appear to be arranged such that they flow into one another, a nice touch that would work much better with more interesting guitar work. The composition is decent, but given how the riffs blend together it's often hard to appreciate. As an example, the opener "Prevail" changes quite often, but the similarity and relative blandness of the constituent elements makes it sound very repetitive.

The album becomes a little more interesting on "They Came At Night", with its simpler mid-tempo beat that shows up later on in the song, but it's nothing outside the genre standard. The guitar solo on "Storm the Sky" is a breath of fresh air. "World's Burning" stands out for having the best riff on the album, with the subsequent track "Everlast" being runner-up. The lack of war metal motifs is odd given that the nice little interlude "Scorched Ground" is well-composed and weaves together all the important war metal sounds: a national anthem, scratchy radio broadcasts, gunfire, artillery and explosions. Fair play to the band, WRATH FROM ABOVE at least sound convicted. They remain fairly high-energy and give off the impression that they're trying to play as hard as possible. This might be the problem, though - the band rarely give themselves a chance to breathe, which, while not necessarily a bad thing, does mean that the album doesn't flow well. At this stage, the band lacks a unique selling point. In a genre as habitually monotonous as black metal, a band needs to either depart from the style or perform it exceedingly well, and WRATH FROM ABOVE do neither on this release.