Javelina might be tempting fate slightly by calling the opening song of their 2009 album "You're Going to Hate This," but thankfully it's hardly a hateable start, more a swaggering blast that manages the neat trick of sounding both like black metal and brute N.Y.C.-area hardcore in the vocals while musically sounding like neither. It's a good mix-and-match start for
Beasts Among Sheep, which finds the band adding everything from classically power metal flourishes on "A Little Paranoia" to thrash metal overdrive toward the ending of "The Nuclear Option" -- a brilliant title in its own right -- to even reviving what now seems like the lost art of the buried-at-the-end-of-the-CD track throwaway smash-and-bash with the unlisted number following "Beware the Wrath of the Patient Man." "Towers of Silence" even opens with a rhythm break that could pass for a dubplate for a bit, at least until the riffing fully kicks over the stately pace. At the same time, the combination itself seems to peter out a bit over the course of the album -- while songs like "Arcadia" are powerfully performed, they're also less striking than the first efforts when the album's heard straight through.