There are only really two horses in the race to be the kings of British brutal death metal.
Bristol’s Amputated released their third LP a year or so ago and it was a killer record and here we have Manchester slam crew, Ingested with their third long player ‘Architect Of Extinction’.
The band’s 2009 debut, ‘Surpassing The Boundaries Of Human Suffering’ was a savage slamming blast of a record and very much a product of it’s time with plenty of ‘more extreme than you’ song titles (‘Intercranial Semen Injection’ anyone?). Nevertheless it was a good record and established the band on a good footing on the UK scene. 2011’s follow up ‘The Surreption’ saw the band grow up a bit, dump the wanky song titles and deliver a record of more mature but still brutal death metal. I liked it but it failed to capture the hearts of UKDM fans like the debut did. So here we are with ‘The Architect Of Extinction’ – have the slamming Mancs gone back to the good old bad old days of ‘Skinned And Fucked’?
No. What we have here is a modern brutal death album with all the aggression of their debut but with it harnessed and focussed into a salvo of savage groove laden tracks that make for a really enjoyable listen.
The ‘Divine Right Of Kings’ starts off the record with a simple crushing riff before blasting off to the horizon on a flurry of blasts then coming back down to Earth with some more slamming vibes. In fact this opener is a great representation of the album as a whole. A surprising amount of ideas and textures crammed into a song by a band in a genre not necessarily renowned for its inventiveness.
Instrumental ‘The Penance’ shows a very different and moodily melodic side to the band and album closer ‘The Rotted Eden’ is a near six minute DM epic and a perfect end to the album, which comes wrapped in some amazing artwork from Toshihiro Egawa (who was responsible for the blinding art on the band’s debut too).
Definitely the best work by far from this band.
(8/10 Mark Eve)
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