Extreme metal, specifically death metal, has its roots in horror movies. Many bands take influence from horror films in their lyrics and imagery, and their sound feels like it was ripped straight out of a slasher movie. One band that sounds like a horror soundtrack is Infected Dead, whose EP titled “Archaic Malevolence” came out last year, and provides some solid death metal with a very haunting feel. “Book of Dead Names” acts as the intro for this album. With a sound effect that sounds like a music box winding up and then playing, something straight out of a supernatural movie. “Archaic Malevolence” is the first full track on this album, and has a very epic and dark tone with a great lead guitar. The band opens this album with great writing, and adds in a well-done solo for good measure.
The band doesn’t slow down for “Ressurrectionist”, in fact, the band chooses to speed up. This song is chaotic and fast. The range of their vocalist is shown off here, as well as another well-done solo. “Invocation of Unspeakable Gods” has a very dark opening, before launching into some solid riffs. This song slows the pace down a bit while maintaining the solid writing of the previous few. Up next is “Forced Existence”, the pace is picked up a bit on this six-minute song, the longest on the album. This song has some nice riffs, and again has a nice solo. The album ends on “Samsara”, and this song is very guitar focused. With nice riffs, lead guitar, and solo, this song shows off the full capabilities of the band’s guitar. The drumming on here is also heavy as hell, and the vocals are really well-done here as well. This is a very good album. If you like straight death metal, don’t sleep on this.
Overall Score: 9.0/10
Review by Sam Hookom
