The San Fran death metal band returns with the second full length. This time it's more polished but no less dense or dark, two qualities that make for good death metal. It's no secret I am more partial to black metal, as death metal can be one dimensional and just focuses on the aggressive element with little more emotional depth. However I grew up on early Morbid Angel and Deicide as a teenager so I can appreciate it. These guys are not the first death metal band I have covered on here and they will not be the last, because if you can make dark and sonic music I will give it a listen.
There is melody to the guitar but nothing over harmonized and gay like Dark Tranquility or the more thrash minded Entombed followers.Its pretty gut wrenching and cavernous, the opener is heavily syncopated and is like an attack being launched at you from the dark recesses of some foul cavern.The drummer gets a lot of props because you would think death metal drummers lack restraint and are incapable of serving the song, this guys proves that theory wrong and never overplays. "Enigma of Disgust" has groove to it with out being cheesey or diminishing the dark manner in which they are going about this dirty work. He never makes the annoying snare hits that have to be the most boring beat in metal , but all to common in run of the mills death metal.
Comparisons to Incantation can be drawn, the deep sepulchral vocal delivery being similar, but I think this blows away the last Incantation album ,every one rave about like it was the coming of the anti- Christ. "3 AM in Agony" starts off more like your a typical death metal but finds a groove that grinds deep into the rooted soil this song sprung from.Every thing about this album is echoing up from the deep, one of the thickest guitar tones I have heard in some time. "3 Am" might be a little more straight forward in terms of composition than the first two tracks but makes up for this in its brutal grind.
The step back and allow the riff of "Incel" to be creepy before stomping down into it. The slower doomy death metal riff is a change from the beating they have given your ears up til this point. The slow is beautiful in its dissonance and the song build well in intensity with out having to rely on speed . The title track pounds to life with an almost Slayer like punch to its groove.The vocals choosing a cadence similar to post- Barnes Cannibal Corpse. By the end of the song , they do stumble into a few generic death metal riffs, here but balance those moments out by the ambient feeling of the guitar solo and doesn't seem to hamper my enjoyment of the song.
"Repulsive Arousal " closes out the album, it slows down into the tomb crawling riff , that lumbers a few beats of ahead of the doomier place they went earlier in the album. They pick up the pace a minute and a half into the song, but don't trip over themselves while running down this hill. The drum work here has a noticeable Lombardo influence , but refrains from getting carried away with the double bass. Theres a little Morbid Angel like chaos to the solo section. Overall this album is one of the more enjoyable death metal albums I heard, granted the genre doesn't lend it self to reinventing the wheel but I will give this a 9.
for a taste of their earlier work see below
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