Immolation - Failures For Gods
Review: Like most complex things this music is an alternating series of influences from at least two simultaneous linear sources, moving its rhythms from the abrupt to the contiguous at the same time it migrates its harmony from the dissonant to a centering of the harmonic unevenness that permits slightly displaced, resonant melodies across varied structures (shape of melody denoted by modal similarities between interval stripes) in a style similar to the harmolodic work of Ornette Coleman or, centuries earlier, the fugues of J.S. Bach written in counterpoint yet harmonizing across the range of a pipe organ.
This is near a parallel melody technique yet crafted in a more organic sense of not parallelism but a central melodic narrative often employing negative space against and along with which submelodies emphasize depth of motivic metonymy within or referencing form of its shape, creating in their sequenced interaction a calculation of texture in tone of depth and balanced inconsistency to the harmonic symmetry it provides to central narrative and in derivation from that, unifying theme cluster including introductory material of the primal differentiation of harmonic spaces.
Ideas put forth in the stylistic changes on Here In After extend on this album toward more than technique a voice and in vocalization, and their use of dissonance is sparser than either Voivod or their next most recent album. This album streamlines the approach but seems blocky, and in some cases partially incomplete, although in a balance between its parts it exceeds the album prior through rhythmic and structural coherence which outshines their previous effort, on which the unison was unsteady and caused a lingering aftertaste of assembly not organic juncture. Tight and narrow vocals hammer a cadence along the leading figure used by the drums and slot between beats a filling timbre while drums sprinkle and cacophonous fall into precise internal fills during the process of spreading unreality through suspended beats relying upon cadence and texture more than hesitation and delivery.
1. Once Ordained (5:22)
2. No Jesus, No Beast (4:43) 
3. Failures for Gods (6:25)
4. Unsaved (4:37)
5. God Made Filth (3:58)
6. Stench Of High Heaven (4:24)
7. Your Angel Died (5:26)
8. The Devil I Know (5:24)
Invective against the church and Christ rings throughout this work with an overhashed repetition factor with a message many feel cannot be repeated enough; its main feature is the serpentine vocal bends and guttural snaps which anchor it to the changing topology of narrative. Songwriting uses arrangement like a weapon to work riffs into thematic directional points and exploit inherent tendencies of dissonance to create a rising wave of harmonic phenomena into which pure rhythm and melodic completion in abstract counterpoint to precept fall as means of working resolution, from which a proliferation of options and equally chaotic conclusion arise. Technicalists should not miss lead guitar, drum and bass performances from these musicians with professional attitudes.
This album remains enduring for its qualities of instrumental rigor and compositional integrity, with the latter meaning that each song on this flattened sphere rushes past the question of whether it is distinct from others with shape, concept and meaning unique to the particular articulation it wishes to express. Within a waveform of shifting textures and melodic anticipation set across a sequence of switches representing possible harmonies, songs expel what has never changed about art: its howling fusion of all emotions into an appreciation of life. In hellishness and the serenity of balanced and logical structure, Failures for Gods reigns at the top of a hierarchy of metal achievements.