This review will be a different one, I’m not focusing on the elements behind the music, what this album is will be the larger focus. Besides, released in 2018, is a large, 8 disc album featuring over 8 hours of music from the band’s early days up to their last two albums, with songs in various stages from songs with no vocals to fully fleshed out but never released songs. The only complaint I have about this collection is that timewise, it stops just before my favorite album of the band, and I would always like to hear more from that era.

 

The demo versions of songs are unique because some, such as the demo for Like, differs greatly from the actual release. This is compared to other demo’s I’ve heard online which are the final versions of songs, just without the final mixing. For some songs, like Calling, they include multiple versions where they tried different things in the mix.

 

There are some original songs on here as well. Also, they’ve included a few songs live from the studio and the original release of their independent record. The original songs are a great way to contrast the rough demos and goes to show how much writing a band does just for one album. The “instrumental” songs remain interesting because the band doesn’t say if there were meant to be vocals or if their current version was how it intended to sound, which means the songs can go in multiple directions.

 

Besides is a great album(s) to listen to because of how much variety can exist from unfinished and unrealized songs. It also shows how much a song’s sound can change from professional mixing. This album is one I recommend for anyone entering the world of writing and recording music to see examples of the writing process and how a song can change over time.