Band Name: Immolation
Album Title: Decent
Tracklist:
These Vengeful Winds
The Ephemeral Curse
God’s Last Breath
Adversary
Attrition
Bend Towards The Dark
Host
False Ascent
Banished
Descent
Rating:
Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Run Time: 41:35
Version Reviewed: Jewel Case CD
Band Members:
Steve Shalaty - Drums
Alex Bouks - Guitar
Robert Vigna - Guitar
Ross Dolan - Bass, Vocals
Additional Musician: Danny Lilker - Guest Vocals On “Host” And “Descent”
Additional Album Credits:
Mix And Mastering By Zach Ohren
Drums Recorded By Nolan C. Buchanan
Guitars, Bass And Vocals Recorded And Engineered By Justin Passamonte
Artwork By Eliran Kantor
Interior Artwork By Santiago Francisco Jaramillo
Layout By Rob Kimura
Yonkers, New York’s Death Metal heroes Immolation is a weird band for me. I only own two of their albums and I don’t know why. I love the first two albums that I own, but for some reason, some inexplicable reason I never got any other albums until now. I’ve seen them live a few times too. Weird. Anyway, I decided to pick up their news (and thirteenth!) album called “Descent” without ever listening to it first, like the old days! I sure am happy I did!
The music here is 100% Old School U.S. styled Death Metal. It maybe has a bit more polish because they’ve grown as musicians and there’s new production and recording techniques, but this would sound at home at any Death Fest in the early 90’s. Dissonant and heavy guitars, excellent drumming, a bass that pounds through the mix like it should. Power chords, speed riffing… it’s all there and it’s done better than most other bands that are still going from that early bygone era. I really love that slow, prodding pace interrupted by brief moments of speed. It makes me want to slam dance in my office. The vocals are perfectly brutal and the lyrics touch upon uplifting themes like hatred, anti-religion and darkness. As hinted at earlier, the production is superb and retains a classic Death Metal sound while keeping with modern times in that it it’s not muddy, raw or low-fi sounding.
The cover art is unique and well done looking like a hand painted scene of a female being burned away as she descends into a fiery hellscape. That’s my interpretation anyway. Inside of the foldout poster-style booklet you will find other excellent pieces of art, the album lyrics. The CD tray insert also has additional cool artwork. It also has all of the album and band information.
I need to fix it so that I have all of Immolation’s albums. “Descent” is an absolute gem of an old school Death Metal album that will have old and new fans alive nodding their heads in time with it’s catchy riffs and beats. So far, this is the album of the year for me.
As always, I ask my readers to support the bands, labels and artists by purchasing the physical copies of the albums they love or by supporting them by visiting their Bandcamp page.
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