Impending Doom: Hellbent (2021)

I am trying to open up my mind a little more to some genres I have not generally been a fan of.  The first one is deathcore.  Deathcore is obviously a hybrid genre of death metal and hardcore, and it is one that I thought would be a short-lived phase from around 2007 to 2015 or so, but it is not going away.  My Twitter (I refuse to call it X) page is often full of deathcore mentions, so I decided to revisit the few deathcore albums I own and see if I can appreciate them more.  Off the top of my head, I own four (one album each by Through the Eyes of the Dead, Carnifex, Despised Icon and this one).  I suppose you could count Infant Annihilator too.  I've only seen All Shall Perish and Fit for an Autopsy in concert, both opening for bands I wanted to see.  Yep, like I said, it was not really a genre I cared much for, so I avoided it.

I can't say I will be making a deep dive into the genre and I am going to stick around the bands that are more on the metal side of things.  So, no Slaughter to Prevail.  I can't stand that fucking band.  Maybe I will try to branch out a bit and check out bands that I have not really explored in the past, such as Job for a Cowboy (still one of the stupider metal band names I have heard of), Whitechapel, and the like.  I fear I am becoming an angry, curmudgeonly metalhead stuck in the past.  Whether I like it or not, the music evolves and deathcore is not going anywhere.  

So, first up is Impending Doom, and this is an EP so it is short enough to listen to all the way through without shutting off right away and giving up on the whole plan.  Now, Impending Doom is notable because they are a Christian deathcore band.  I can't remember how it is that I came into possession of this release.  Maybe I didn't know that when I purchased the album.  Maybe it was sent to me when I was a member of the Monthly Metal Box subscription club.  I don't know.  The band apparently likes to refer to their music as "gorship music", a portmanteau of gore and worship.  The lyrics are definitely Christian-oriented.  The first track "Satanic Panic" features this little gem: "You will feel the wrath of God when the noose drops.  Vengeance is his name."  So, not really your bright and shiny Christianity, more of the fire and brimstone preacher stuff.  It's a bit more heavy-handed in its message than some Christian bands.  

The music is pretty typical for the genre.  It's certainly heavy and more oriented toward the death metal side of things.  The hardcore portions are definitely the heavy use of breakdowns, but they are generally built around actual riffs.  Some of the songs are quite a bit better than others.  The last track "I Must End" should have taken its own advice about four minutes sooner.  The band leans into some nu-metal-esque elements at times, such as eerie guitar noodling and drumming that sounds lifted from Korn.  The aforementioned opening track "Satanic Panic" and the title track are probably the highlights of the album.  Some of the other tracks veer too far from death metal at times for my taste.  

Well, I tried.  I don't know how I will keep going at this and for how long.  I suppose I didn't hate this album, but it did try my patience at times.  I will give it another couple spins and see if it is something I can get into or not.  As I said before, at least it's short.    

Infant Annihilator: The Battle of Yaldabaoth (2019)

What is the line from the old Smuckers commercials?  "With a name like Smuckers, it has to be good", I think?  Well, with a name like Infant Annihilator...never mind.  I'm not totally sure that is at all true. 

Infant Annihilator has been around for a few years now playing some form of technical deathcore mixed with a little bit of slam.  And with a name like Infant Annihilator, subtlety is definitely not the name of the game.  Neither is good taste apparently.  The band has a bit of a twisted sense of humor with albums like The Palpable Leprosy of Pollution featuring songs all about pedophilia.  Yeah.  Not exactly the kind of subject matter to endear yourself to a large crowd.  Obviously the band was taking the stance of being as extreme as possible, and they certainly made a name for themselves, but it was awful. 

This album was billed as something of a more mature, more musically-proficient release, even if some of the lyrics do not show any of that maturity.  I decided to give it a shot.  Just to see what the band was all about.  I will give them credit for being extremely technically impressive.  The album is filled with complex drum patterns, noodling guitar leads, ground-shaking bass drops.  Much of it sounds like it could not possibly be played by a real human being, particularly the speed of the hyper blast beating drums, and there is probably a reason for that.  But rather than being just pure technical wankery, the songs are built around riffs, some of which almost come close to straightforward death metal at times.  Just try and parse that sentence.  The vocals are delivered in a variety of styles, from shrieking wails to deep, guttural roars. 

I do have a complaint about it though.  The album is quite long, at a little under an hour.  Most of the songs are not overly long, with only a handful over five minutes.  There are just a lot of them.  The lyrics are rather juvenile as well, but the nice thing is that with the unintelligible vocals, you can't tell what the fuck is being said anyway.  Particularly with songs like "Feast ov Goreglutton" which is just absurdly graphic and disturbing.  Come to think of it, I am not sure how anyone comes up with something like this, much less puts it in a song.

Honestly, I enjoyed this album a lot more than I thought I would.  Neither technical death metal nor deathcore are genres that attract my attention and I was a little reluctant to check this out.  I am not saying this will be an album I listen to frequently, and I really have to be in the mood to take this kind of a pummeling aural punishment, but I definitely enjoy it when I am listening to it.  Which is a nice surprise.