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Immolation’s debut album is yet another one of those essential old school death metal albums, at least according to death metal playlist makes on YouTube. As it was also one of the more expensive albums, I initially considered purchasing something from their highly rated later releases; however, while listening to bits and pieces of songs on YouTube, I felt the atonal guitar leads were too much like out of key instead of a cool effect. This may have been my impression because I was listening to the songs on my iPhone while cleaning up my children’s playroom.
The music on this album is interesting in the scope of American death metal of the early nineties. The death metal movement is generally said to have emerged in Florida and it has become my impression that those bands grew out of the thrash metal scene, with some exceptions like Obituary sounding more influenced by Celtic Frost. Immolation, who are from Yonkers, NY (if Wikipedia is to be trusted) play a much more technical style with tight, complex riffing mixed in with more standard, speedy riffs. The music in any one song shifts and changes, the drums moving along almost with the guitars rather than maintaining a steady beat. The use of double bass drumming is also more in sync with the guitars than simple, standard pummeling. As for the atonal lead guitar, hearing it in the headphones it sounds great, perfectly suited to the wild ride that is the music.
Vocalist Ross Dolan eschews the thrashy bark and growl of many Floridian bands and instead delivers the lyrics in a deep, breathy, back-of-the-throat rumbling regurgitation of air. His vocal style is similar to that of Cryptopsy’s Lord Worm except that the lyrics are at times comprehensible in contrast to Lord Worm’s vocalizations which sound more like a foreign and beastly language.
Taken song by song, each track is packed with heavy guitar riffs that gallop and twist, crazy drumming, and Dolan’s dragon-belly vocals. To me though, this album is easy to play through without hearing the subtle differences that distinguish one song from another. Part of the reason is that every song is comprised of the same sonic moves. There are no acoustic breaks, no stand-alone awesome riffs, no atmospheric parts. Each song just delves straight into the thunderous sound, different versions of the same demon dance. Another reason for the seemingly repetitive approach to the music is the production. The quality is no exactly dense, nor is it shoddy, but each of the instruments and vocals sound compacted into a warm, dark ball of sound. It would be easy to brush of the album as having little variety and therefore concluding that it gets old quickly. But each time I listen carefully to any one track, I feel I may have found the one stand out track on the album. So, basically, we are looking at an album of awesome songs with an awesome playing style that could be easily misunderstood as having little depth or breadth.
I’ll be looking into Immolation’s catalogue further with the hopes of hearing a better produced album that still delivers the same tight and technical performance.