Embrional – The Devil Inside

This is just a personal thing, but damn this title reminds one of that critically panned should-have-bombed film The Devil Inside from 2012.  Luckily this has nothing to do with that.  So why even mention it?  Sometimes things just happen around here, and just as we accept the random, so must you, or there is no hope.  Death metal, here we go again.  We’re tempted to pull out the classic “enough with the old” argument, but let’s avoid it for once so we can waste more time talking about the actual band in question.  Eastern Europe has a number of interesting acts in the genre, some sadly overlooked in spite of a push by Relapse many years ago to promote areas like Poland, such as the generally solid sampling via Polish Assault in 2000 that featured bands like Yattering.  There was a reason for their choice, and it’s because the Polish death metal scene was and is incredibly vibrant in spite of general ignorance about it elsewhere.  But get this, there are around 800-900 active death metal bands in Russia, one of the largest countries in the world, and there are almost double that in active death metal bands in Poland.  Yeah, something’s going on there.

  

Embrional is part of that something.  The term itself is derived from old Slavic and partially from Turkish, meaning something that is within an embryonic stage, evolving, forming into something new.  In this case with this particular album, The Devil Inside, it is a forming into modern death metal.  Aside from the typical logo, cool though confusing artwork, and what seems a typical presentation if you scope the song titles, this is most certainly not your typical, not the old we said we weren’t going to talk about, and an excellent example of the current Polish vein, bleeding so much goodness all over the world.  It’s blood that even if tainted with several diseases you don’t mind rolling in it, bathing in it, drinking it, and probably wearing it.

 

The Devil Inside steps past its rather basic appearance to tear through using its musical presentation.  As a prophet of Polish death metal, Embrional are more virile.  They’ve reached past such a stage of early growth, past the stage of infantilism, past those damn teenage years, they’re somewhere between being young adults and adults.  Young, yet experienced and full of wild cravings.  One thing these guys have done is leave all of their material within a very consumable amount of space.  Each track is short, covering roughly 3:50 on average.  But that’s all they need.  The riffs appear obtuse, unusual, like a schzoid rambling very esoteric beliefs, but it somehow makes sense.  This is for a few reasons.  First, the solos go from ultra technical to brutally complex and dissonant, and Embrional found a way to make them addicting, not just ornament to showcase skill.  These parts are something of a confusion between riff and solo, surprisingly melded into one entity.  Second, their usage of minor scales is particularly addicting, with sudden breaks in flow lead by atypical drumming.  And third, the vocal delivery is straightforward, but right where it needs to be.  Evident, shrieking, low, but it sits just behind the music itself so it can make claim to the future.  These things put together create a spectacular example of what’s to come.  A single listen is not enough to grasp the majority of The Devil Inside.  In the future, hopefully they find a way to get their imagery to match their sound.

 

Embrional Official Facebook

Written by Stanley Stepanic

Embrional: The Devil Inside
Godz Ov War Productions, Old Temple, Third Eye Temple
4.7 / 5