HISTORY
Think
Meshuggah as a pure death-metal band and you might get a slim idea of how
Immolation would sound like. With deep, straight-on orchish growls, complexive guitar work and ingredients from
Morbid Angel are some of the traits that
Immolation has to offer. Formed in 1986 they entered the world of death-metal, not one of the most spectacular bands in the genre but after some good quality demos
Immolation was starting to churn out albums. Most of the albums had their own special sound but they were all on the same track if you know what I mean.
ALBUM INFORMATION
This album is called
''Failures For Gods'', an album with some similarities with
''Here In After''. Both of the albums has the same kind of brutal sound but this album has been turned up in speed just a little bit. The crazy and complicated guitar work is still the main dish along with the cookie monster vocals. As any death-metal these guys also focus their lyrics against god and jesus and stuff that comes along with them, these lyrics is definitely not about peace, love and understanding. Thanks to
Immolation's self-invented sound keeps them apart from the
Morbid Angel habitat, it really does sounds like they are on the edge of falling into
Morbid Angel's territory from time to time.
THE BAND MEMBERS
Ross Dolan, both vocalist and bassist in this album, his vocals is yet unchanged. These orchish deep grunting continues in this album, there is no sign of variation in the vocal work which is one negative thing from my part, it is still an effective performance but if there was a bit more variation it wouldn't sounded so old if you know what I mean. We continue with
Robert Vigna and
Tom Wilkinson, these two guitarists does a good job with the guitars. They still use their special mix of old-school death-shredding and their own complicated but yet interesting riffing style. While playing a heavy and fast rhythm section they also let go of sudden guitar noises, but they sound more like whiny and annoying hybrid notes who whats to get attention. Lets have a look at the solos too, the solos on this album is what you might expect, the solos are played in chaos, disorder, complexiness, energy and in different paces. I think that these solos are good, they does not sound like amateur or overdone stuff.
Alex Hernandez is the new drummer in this album, his drum patterns are basically the same as the in the album before this except that these patterns are faster. This is one factor that makes this band come close to
Morbid Angel material.
MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS ALBUM
As I mentioned before, this album felt similar to
''Here In After'', both in the vocals and instruments, the only difference was that the band had more speed in this album. Some good things about this album was the complicated guitar work, it wasen't as crazy as in the album before but you can hear that this nothing that normal death-metal bands often uses in their material. But there is of course lots of advanced and technical both stuff in modern and old death-metal bands but this is more crazy and wierd, its a bit hard to explain. I liked the guitar work but it wasen't excellent, there was moments that really annoying like the songs
Your Angel Died and
Unsaved, a good example of songs who had these whiny guitar noises that I mentioned about. Another thing I liked here was the turned up tempo, the material had a bit more energy which made the songs a bit more catchier and heavier. Though this is not my style of death-metal but I did enjoy this from time to time but I would say that you don't have to listen to this over and over. You might get bored even though if you like death-metal of any kind, listen to this once in a while and not continuosly.
MY CONCLUSION
This wasen't so good in my ears this time, I would go for
''Here In After'' instead of this but this wasen't bad either. As I said before, the turned up tempo in the material was a good thing but that made the band sound like a
Morbid Angel copy. The difficult and unreasonable guitar work saved the band and made it sound a bit more different, I would've classed this band as copy cats otherwise. Not bad but not too good to me, but if you like old-school death-metal, ''Florida death-metal'' and death-metal in general you should give this band a chance. This album has energy, heaviness and classic features which is typical for the death-metal genre. Now I'm done with this review and I hope you thought that this was enjoying and informative.
RECOMMENDED TRACKS
-- Your Angel Died
-- Failures From Gods
-- Once Ordrained
I didn't enjoy this as much as the previous album so this album will be given a 3/5
