INFERNAL DOOM — Just the Beginning (review)

INFERNAL DOOM — Just the Beginning album cover

Album · 2005 · Melodic Death Metal

3/5 · 2024-09-05
siLLy puPPy

Perhaps the most southern based death metal band on the entire planet, INFERNAL DOOM emerged from the extreme southern Patagonian city of Punta Arenas, Chile in 1999 and has been keeping warm in its proximity to Antarctica by unleashing its own brand of melodic technically infused death metal. The band has released four albums in its quarter of a century existence with this debut JUST THE BEGINNING debuting in 2005. Initially released only as a CD-R, the band has since found supporting labels and the album was reissued in 2015 in a more appropriate CD and digital format.

With an ever changing lineup over the decades this earliest offering features Jaime Bustamante (vocals, guitar), Marcelo Oyarzo (guitar), Marco Alvarez (bass) and Vladimir Vukovic (drums). While labeled generally as death metal, this debut is a strange sounding album that sounds a bit like melo-death with doses of technicalities only the vocals aren’t of the guttural growl variety but rather a raspy scream from the abyss effect. The band releases its albums in the English language thus projecting an international intent of marketing.

The album of nine tracks and about 47 minutes of playing time comes across more like a progressive metal album with death metal crossover over aspects somewhat akin to a weaker style of Death, Cynic or even Atheist. In fact the band considers itself progressive death metal. The music while not incompetent doesn’t quite measure up to the ambitions though with lazy drumming (most of the time) and rather monotonous guitar riffing (for the most part). The tempos often drop down to such slow speeds that it completely escapes being death metal altogether especially when the clean vocals are thrown in. The overall effect is a little too polished to sound threatening and yet not competent enough to sound like a compelling progressive metal album either.

The second instrumental “Without Scape” sounds more akin to the melodic heavy metal instrumentals delivered by 80s bands such as Iron Maiden however it’s a bit more energetic and based in extreme metal with heavier drumming and more distorted guitar riffing. The closing “Beginning Of The End” is the longest track and most progressive track at just over 11 minutes long and starts out with some demented chanting before bursting into a heavy metal attack. The track features varying tempos and some slide guitar moments as well as what sounds like fretless bass. It’s also probably the most competent track on the album however even so it’s mostly an extended jamming type of track with a receptive riffing cycle and a bunch of guitar squeals and antics. Nice noisy as fuck ending though! Decent but nothing mind blowing either.

Granted this was a primeval debut that found a band in one of the remotest regions of the planet finding its way onto a much larger world’s stage. To my ears this sounds a bit amateurish even with the short electronic instrumental “Butterfly Effect” which is more of an ambient clean guitar intermission. It’s a decent album with nothing inherently wrong but sounds like it suffers from an identity crisis as if it doesn’t know if it wants to be prog, prog metal or death metal and in the end doesn’t really sound like any of the above. Basically what drags this album down is the samey songwriting approach. This is my first exposure to INFERNAL DOOM so most likely their newer albums are much more competent. This one however is just a bit too underwhelming for my liking however not offensively so in any way. Just average.