|
This
is Bolivian death metal. And it’s got me thinking about
all those South American demos I used to like so much
back during the first half of the 90’s. The charm was
everywhere, from the sloppy yet spirited performances,
to the cheap and inept recordings, what was registered
was not only music but the spirit of a generation of
enthusiastic underground metalheads. Those are the same
sounds I hear on Ages of Darkness and this is the death
metal of yore, the likes of which served as the template
for thousands to base their music on and then move onto
more extreme and more fluid pastures. If it wasn’t for
music like this, death metal, as we know it, would not
exist.
What is
surprisingly is how accurate and sincere this sounds. And I say
that because as I listen to “Necroapocalyptic Warrior” I can’t
imagine mastermind Murderer planning out this retro sound while
chilling out in a cave in the Andes. My bet is he went with his
instinct and taste and maximized his means, which probably
weren’t many nor high. Time has not passed for the
Virginia-based
one man project Infernal Massacre and as I listen to Ages of
Darkness I realize that time has not passed for me either.
We live in the
digital age. But while most bands use cutting edge technology to
reproduce the sounds of old metal, Infernal Massacre aces it by
going cheap. Ages of Darkness sounds exactly like you what you’d
expect from a demo from the 80’s or 90’s. The recording itself
is basic. It lacks power that’s true, the sounds are by no means
in your face but the delivery certainly is. The guitars seem
to be barely effect-laden. Instead the riffs run with rampant
electricity, they are thrashy and old school death metal. The
drums are washed in speedy beats and bathed in a non-stop walls
of cymbals. Adding to the percussion; there is even a water-pipe
like sound on “Necroapocalyptic Warrior”
More
distinctly, the vocals of Murderer reveal a double or triple
personality disorder. He has this natural growl which seems
somewhat influenced by David Vincent and an even more natural
bark that approximates hardcore pissiness, it emerges too often
in “Gore Torture”. Murderer frequently goes deeper though, his
eviscerating guttural belch is everywhere. All this, only adds
to the blackened death metal sounds of Infernal Massacre.
Complains?
Yeah, I just wish there was more original music here. Out of the
8 cuts, two are intros and one is a cover of Slayer’s “War
Ensemble”. Other than that, I have enjoyed this as much as I
enjoyed listening to Sarcofago for the first time way back in
the day.
MySpace
|
