somehow, this groundbreaking band always gets forgotten. perhaps their precise symphonies of morbid and unsettling dissonance threaten people, or maybe it is their refusal to join the chugging "brutal" bandwagon. for whatever case, this band's two excellent previous albums "here in after" and "failures for gods" seem to be mostly unnoticed despite their singularity in carrying on the technical death metal tradition as something both primitive (violent, simple, direct) and progressive (inventive melodic songwriting). here Immolation take triumph further by layering melodies in a distinctive shifting of ambient harmony that expands on concepts used by early 1990s black metal in the context of shuddering, blasting, thunderous death metal. racing digitally accurate drums complement the elaborate melodic architectures of guitars and sludgy, alienated and inverted riffing. blasphemic resistance of an intelligent sort (!) flavors the vocals and lead guitars as always are a neurotic spidering of sudden realization in the brain of a dissident. this fucking rocks.

© 2000 s.r. prozak