HISTORY
Let me introduce you to this death-metal band called
Immolation, formed back in New York in the year of 1986. This band is playing death-metal as I said in old-school version, this band plays death-metal in the same area as bands like
Morbid Angel and
Death for example. A thing that makes this band a bit unique is the half-crazy riffage which is used in their music, the guitar work does not have this kind of ''repeated riffs'' which some bands has. I mean that other bands uses few and more simplistic riffs and/or shredds which are played in a fast pace. This band is a mix of 70% standard, old-school death-metal added with 20% of
Meshuggah-complexity and 10% of self-invented madness, thats the way I would describe this band.
ALBUM INFORMATION
I guess that you read my own explanation so you have a small idea how this band might sound like, this album is called
''Here In After'' and here is a short description of the overall album sound. The vocal style is of course growling but the vocals are performed in calm tempo and the vocals are the same in all of the songs. The songs are both slow, medium and fast in their tempos, the drumming is very similar to
Morbid Angel and that will say fast and heavy. The guitars might be the most standout instrument here because of the unusual riffing style, the riffing is pretty complicated but it is yet very interesting to listen at. The bass on the other hand is unfortunatly hard to hear, but if you have a good EQ or quite loud volume you might hear the bass quite good though.
THE BAND MEMBERS
This album was performed by a group of four members, the first member is the vocalist and bassist
Ross Dolan. His vocals are has a dense and quite deep sound, very good growling performance except that the variety in the vocals are bad. Maybe good to die-hard death-heads but the growls seems to only have one level and it doesn't move on to ''undiscovered'' levels. The bass by the way is decent, you can't hear it very well but it does build up a heavy and brutal rhythm section. No standout performances here but the overall rhythm sound is very thick and dense.
Robert Vigna and
Tom Wilkinson are the two guitarists in this band, this is a great piece of work I must say. The guitars are very heavy and thick, the complicated riffing style and standard death-shreddings made an awesome sound, the songs were maybe not so catchy but you just have to listen to this kind of riffage. The solos are though pretty good, the solos are also a bit complex and they are also quite chaotic and screamy. The solos also has different paces throughout the material, both fast and slow ones. The drumming is done by
Craig Smilowski, the drumming is typical standard death-metal. The patterns are often fast and most times very heavy actually, if you like
Morbid Angel and similar bands with these kinds of drums you would enjoy this. Some catchy patterns here and there and the variety is good, it is not the same pattern in all of the songs and these patterns also feels a bit similar to the wicked guitar work.
MY POSITIVE THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS ALBUM
This was very interesting death-metal, most poeple might consider this as an ordinary death-metal but I thought this was a bit special. One thing I enjoyed here was this kind of wierd guitar work, the sudden shreiks of guitar noises here and there and the complexity in the riffage was very interesting. This is one of few death-metal bands that I have heard yet with this kind of guitar work, very cool sound. The variety of the overall material was very good too, there was fast pounding songs, half-sluggish with complicted quitar work and more moderated paced songs with classic Florida death-metal ingredients. The songs maybe wasen't so catchy but you just had to listen through the whole song just because of the guitars. The overall musicianship was very good, the band didn't deliver then same ''porducts'' all the time, they had a very good range in their material, one of the better death-metal bands I have heard yet. The album vocers from this band is also pretty eye-catching, there is no laziness behind the art cover which is a positive thing.
MY NEGATIVE THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS ALBUM
The vocals was one weak point that I found in this band, the vocals didn't had a good variety. The vocals was the same throughout the whole album, I prefer more expanded vocal work than this ''single-tracked'' stuff. The growls were very good but some variety wouldn't hurt. This kind of guitar work was indeed very enjoying and interesting but at the same time you might get bored if you listen to this too many times, listen to this once in a while and you will still think that this is good. If you listen to this too often you might lay away this material and later forget about it, but I might be wrong because I'm not a dedicated death-metal fan.
MY CONCLUSION
There you go, that was the best I could come up with about this cool death-metal band. This was very interesting material, I often don't like the old-school material as much as the melodic death material but this was different. The high variety in the musicianship and the songs made this to a very cool band, still very evil, heavy and brutal, this would attract many death-heads who haven't heard about this before. I will recommend death-heads who like old-school death-metal, people who likes death-metal of all kinds should give this a chance too, you either love this or hate this. I didn't love but I liked it! I thank you for taking time to reading this through and I hope I have given you some good guidance, thanks for this time.
RECOMMENDED TRACKS
-- Burn With Jesus
-- Towards Earth
-- I Feel Nothing
-- Away From God
Because of the crazy but yet effective guitar work and complexive song patterns, this album will receive a 4/5
