The label says it all, really. HPGD. Horror, Pain, Gore, Death. Inferion should know about this as they’ve been doing it since 1995, now releasing album number three.
An all-out assault is the greeting. With shades of Behemoth in the swirling blackness, these Americans blast us and bombard us with a technical brand of horror black metal thrash. The intensity is enhanced by excellent sound production which enables us to revel in the layers of thunder and darkness. It’s more than bludgeoning, as there’s a suggestion of emotional appeal and even majesty in “Contempt”. This is as short-lived as the track itself – Inferion are not a band to indulge in navel gazing – as brutality returns quickly in the imperious and djenty “Tempted by Failure”. Stopping for breath is not an option as the thunderstorm of heaviness continues with the rapid gun fire of “Embers”. Battery apart, it all hangs together well with strong riffs and intriguing guitar lines which add colour to the apocalyptic roars and thick, black clouds which surround every piece of this album. Those clouds are there as usual on “Until The Sun Consumes Us” but here Inferion prove, if it needs to be proved, their ability to structure a song. In fairness, although smoke is coming off the musical tyres and the vocalist sounds as if he’s a warlord preaching to the dead, it’s all controlled. There are a couple of guitar solos, including a particularly excellent one on “Further From the Light”, itself a magnificent and majestic track, but Inferion impressively never lose the context of a song, however swirling and complex it may all be. Unfortunately “Further from the Light” ended in mid-magnificence but this is what Inferion do. They don’t waste time. There are infernal onslaughts to be undertaken, and dark chasms to be explored. Another tremendous, shadowy solo falls in the middle of “The Serpent of the Valley”, complementing the utterly compelling riff that underlies it. A great strength of Inferion is their ability to inject unexpected melody and even a kind of playfulness into this intensely blackened world of theirs. This happens at the end of “Lament”, before “Aftermath of Destruction” takes over and atmospherically is the musical equivalent of systematic dismemberment. The following track “When Bones Meet Corrosion” has the title for the continuation of this process but for the first time didn’t have the edginess of its predecessors in spite of sticking to the core violence and aggression. “A Hell to Endure” seems to have a similar mission of pummelling our brains out. The guitar meanders nastily before taking off into a world of metal without boundaries, and stopping suddenly. By now the chaos dial is in the red zone, and the comparison is there to be made once more with Behemoth as the album comes to a close with the anarchic and razor-like “Unrestrained”.
You’ve got to like it heavy and black, but if you do, you’ll appreciate this intense onslaught as I did.
(8/10 Andrew Doherty)
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