Ingrown : "Idaho"

 Off the bat what I like about this band is they pack a great deal of riffage into the minute and forty seconds, of the opening track. They have in-your-face pummelling sections that are rapid-fire but give you something to sink your teeth into and headbang a bit. Their eponymous song however is just over a minute and finds its groove about thirty seconds into that time frame. So groove is their mission statement and not really in the breakdown sense either. There is some common ground with Nails, though these guys are more punk and less metallic. The vocals do take on more of a growl at times on "Cold Steel". 

They dish out a more burly Entombed-like beating on "Enemy". This less rabid approach works well also. When they slow things down they can stretch the songs out to two minutes  They do accelerate up to a healthy gallop for this one It even has a guitar solo that would not be out of place on a death metal album."Dead' is more of a beating, though it finds its groove. It might have the most grindcore tendencies so far. They come closer to what you might expect from hard-core on 'Unite" which comes complete with gang vocals. They cover a song by guitarist/ vocalist Ross Hansen's dad who was in State of Confusion. It's pretty much 80s hardcore.

There is more commitment to death metal on "Hellbound".  The title track is a banjo piece, that is more of an outro than a free-standing song on its own and much like covering his dad's band it's a tribute to the musical heritage that inspires these guys to not just make music that is heavy as fuck, but to keep you engaged in the songs where most bands are just going to pound you in the head with a dense sound rather than write catchy songs. I'll round this up to a 9.5, as it's only a couple of weeks into the year but hard to imagine a band putting out a heavier album, but when this drops on March 7th Closed Casket Activities, Sanguisuggabogg, is going to be heading into the studio to record their next album, which might see release before the world ends so too soon to say, though I expect those guys to land more on the death metal side of the fence this time around. 

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