Death Metal Album of the Week: Nocturnus - The Key
Album Reviews: Diocletian - Doom Cult
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Morbid Scriptorium: A Museum of Metal Zines
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Death Metal Album of the Week: Infester – To The Depths… In Degradation
Drawing a fine and transcendent line between the atavism of Autopsy and the technicality of Suffocation, and conveying a dark, narrative sense of atmosphere that brings to mind the best works of black metal acts such as Samael and Mystifier, Infester presented here an example of music that is progressive and sophisticated yet skillfully veils common, trendy perceptions of what makes certain music unique.
The guitars are muddied and have a distortion not unlike what you would hear from Hellhammer’s ‘Death Fiend’ and ‘Satanic Rites’, though with better treatment and not obscuring the musical execution. On occasion, to add punctuality to the songs, we get to hear the notes of a rumbling and trebly bass, which has a tone that resembles Mayhem’s ‘De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas’. A church organ often voices itself throughout the album, melodious and playful in a Bach-lite manner, enhancing the unpleasant dissonance. Vocals consist of multi-layered barks, grunts and shrieks, unintelligible as desired, yet with a great sense of rhythm, 
making for a more ‘open-ended’ listen and fulfilling momentum. Drums are like a cross between Fenriz and Mike Smith, one foot in loose ambience, the other in precise, free-formed battery. Added to this is the lyrical content which for its time was more or less oblivious to ‘political correctness’, a penchant for the grotesque that was typical of Carcass was combined with sickening, almost G.G. Allin like carnal desires which aside alleged ‘ideological sympathies’, which will offend some, and arouse curiosity in others. A nightmarish, cinematic, and well thought out album, it is almost in many ways a soundtrack that is all the artistic aspirations of Black Sabbath taken to an ultimate conclusion.
Possibly one of the genres most overlooked efforts, this marked a merging of disparate styles and broke new ground for musicality and how listeners observed content within the metal genre. Highly recommended by all means.
Filed under: Death Metal Album of the Week,Death Metal Music Reviews — Tags: Black Metal, Death Metal — Pearson @ September 28, 2009 09:40 — Comments (2)
Excellent review for an excellent album that is in dire need of a CD reissue–now, when exactly did Moribund Records stop carrying this one?
DJD is presently the only active musician, which leaves me to wonder what became of the other guys in the band.
Comment by Thanatotron — October 2, 2009 @ 06:52
[...] in deep space. The melodies that tear out of this method resemble a less occult Incantation or Infester but are imbued with all of their insanities. Shades of Revenant appear in the shredding of more [...]
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