Review Summary: Death by popcorn?!
“Deep within the confines of hell, Satan was jumping up and down like a little girl on Christmas morning. The delivery man just brought in a new popcorn machine, and B&B was starting shortly, so Satan filled it up with the most hellish popcorn seeds of all and set it to make his favorite snack as he flipped to the correct channel on his telly. As the machine got going, it started emitting a noise so devilish, so devastating that every human being within its vast sound range got instantly slayed, and only a few insanely tough ones on the outer edges were crippled for life, but lived to tell the tale. Ever since then, every self-respecting extreme metal outfit sees it as a point of honor to emulate the hellish popcorn machine noise in its music when it intends to head for the realms of evil no music had penetrated before...”
...actually, no. Not really. Tell that to Malebolgia, though. Whoever was responsible for the bass drum trigger screwed up really badly, and all the “terrifying, intense and evil” double bass action sounds like Satan's trusty popcorn machine churning out noms before his favorite soap opera. It's somewhat hard to perceive the music as evil when one of the crucial components of generating intensity sounds like a snack maker... and if the last cut on the disc is a generic (and aptly titled) cock rock tune, ending the album so anti-climatically that you instinctively walk up to your stereo to get rid of that crud 80's hair metal radio your girlfriend likes to listen to that turned on automatically as your deathgrind album just ended, only to realize that Requiem For The Inexorable is still on. Jeez...
Questioning their evil aside, what we've got here is a constant barrage of high velocity deathgrind, executed properly, pummeling you with a wall of constantly over the top noise for the majority of the record's duration. When things slow down (namely, the popcorn machine gets out of the way... it feels way too high in the mix, and it blurs out a lot of the more interesting stuff going on behind it), the guitars finally get some more of the limelight. And with reason, too – the best thing about Malebolgia is their overpowering dissonance, bordering on utter cacophony for those untrained. Unfortunately, even their unorthodox harmonization gets old with time, since they base mostly on diminished chords, and the more rule-defying ones are somewhat further in between. Still, the guys' specific harmonic sensibility adds an extra punch to the record and leaves a wide open road for the band's development in the future.
And develop, I'm sure they will – Requiem For The Inexorable is far from an outstanding album, triumphantly supplying the same high speed, popcorn laden, diminished chord bathed sound wall for the majority of its duration, but the occasional slow-down (they even utilize acoustic guitars in the middle of “Requiem”) and psychotic dissonance show promise that something way better may sprout if the guys decide to pursue that direction. Ironically, they may become a way more intense band if they step off the “instant gratification” intensity they seem to be after right now...
