The Palpable Leprosy of Pollution

The day that this album was released was a sad one indeed for the world of heavy music. Its style, called "technical deathcore" under official definitions and called "shit" by people with more than a few functioning brain cells, wasn't necessarily a new idea at the time, having already been stuffed into the modern metal world by Rings of Saturn a few years earlier. Yet, its release and subsequent popularity made concrete the idea that sonic brutality was all that mattered. On a musical level, it wasn't necessary to do much. And if one had the desire to make it sound as though they were doing a lot, they didn't actually have to be able to do it, because computers and studio tricks were on their side. Aspiring young metal musicians and br00tality junkies always on the lookout for the ultimate ear-pummeling took Infant Annihilator's success to heart, and the impact was felt far and wide across the metal landscape. Overly "technical", overly br00tle and overly enhanced bands became more common than ever, and a new generation of metalheads was born who were fooled into thinking that Infant Annihilator really was the band that they sounded like. To boil it all down to a single thought, if you have problems with modern metal, it's likely that you'll find many of your problems in Infant Annihilator and their debut album, "The Palpable Leprosy of Pollution".

Adorned with horribly clichéd inverted cross imagery and shock-value song titles that destroy quite a bit of the band's credibility before the play button is even pressed, the sonic material (the term "music" doesn't necessarily apply) of this album is stereotypical -core in its lowest form. It constantly tries to accomplish far too much with far too little. In other words, attempts at being "heavy" and "br00tle" are made, and most succeed - but at the cost of making the musical material utterly banal and without value. The entire record plays as one gigantic breakdown, with each new section bringing more noteless dissonant chugs and non-metallic slams that, by all definitions, are not technical. Oh yes, they are "heavy", but they aren't technical or impressive. They're there to act as another percussion instrument, and to have as much of an impact as possible without actually doing something musically or bothering to be anything but cookie-cutter. Occasionally, a random sweep will pop out of nowhere, and while the speed of it may be impressive, the notes played in it are not, for it is invariably at least seventy-five percent diminished scale. The deathcore guitar stereotypes are epitomized here, and they would only become more common after this record's release. Listen to any deathcore release that came out this decade, and you'll find that, on some level, it abuses noteless chugs to induce listeners to bang their heads and wave their alcoholic drinks in the air, and/or abuses diminished scale sweeps as something that can be pulled out on the fly to make the guitarist sound like he has more talent than he actually does.

Attempts are made to disguise the hack guitarist with some of the worst drumming (programming) ever to be laid down in a digital sequencer, courtesy of the infamous Aaron Kitcher. Kitcher (or the machine that he's controlling) has three modes: groove, breakdown, and hyperblast. Hyperblast mode is self-explanatory: laughably fast snare and kick hits that can’t even begin to be played as they are by a human, fast enough to the point where they can be measured better in Hertz than beats per minute. The other two modes are self-explanatory as well, laced with occasional buzz-saw fills and improvisations. Of course, each piece has been triggered and time-corrected beyond belief. And some people actually think that Kitcher PLAYS the drum parts that appear on IA albums! Further proof that this type of sound can only be enjoyed by the dumbest of the dumb. The drumming negates the record's authenticity faster than desert dirt absorbs water, and also provides damning evidence as to why the band doesn’t perform live. While it may SOUND br00tle, it only serves the purpose of attempting to counter the vapid guitars with sickeningly artificial technicality, creating a massive contradiction that furthers the album's self-induced euthanasia.

Reportedly, this album was recorded in just a week or so, and that couldn't come across as more transparent in the final result. It's a huge polished deathcore turd that makes every half-assed stab at being br00tle that it can, clips hard, and becomes more of a joke than a real musical project. It's an exploitation of every negative deathcore stereotype, and every metal stereotype, that you've ever heard. It's so low-effort that the lyrics aren't even given a coherent structure. Although it is more metal than just about anything else sonically, there are no words derogatory enough to express just how awful it is on a musical level. You can rush to Infant Annihilator's defense all you want. Say that it's a joke and that the music isn't meant to be taken seriously all you want. If it's such a joke, then why are they regarded by so many as a legitimate musical act? This is no Chainsaw Penis or Car Door Dick Smash we're talking about. Why are not one - but two - of this band's albums at the top of the top-selling technical deathcore releases list on Bandcamp? Why is their style so widely imitated? The band might have intended themselves to be a joke, but nobody got the joke. Which must mean that it's a pretty terrible joke.

Why does this band sound like themselves, though? Why did they stand out in the crowd enough to be noticed as much as they were, and still are? They were among the first to dare to dumb metal music down to this point where it's barely even metal anymore, yet still attempt to push it across as bone-crushingly heavy and technical. It may be heavy, but none of it is catchy, none of it is interesting, none of it is even necessarily technical. Every track sounds exactly the same: an endless breakdown with false-chord grunting that's so unremarkable and interchangeable that it hardly deserves a mention. After listening to one or two tracks on YouTube (and cringing at the accompanying music videos), perhaps it may seem like enough of a novelty to occasionally revisit. But, when an entire album of the stuff is made and becomes popular, it’s no longer a novelty or a joke. It’s an embarrassment. Not just to the band (whether they like it or not), but to metal as a whole. What kind of image does this put out there for metal music? An image of artificial technicality and music videos that are little more than elaborate internet memes. “Metal? Isn’t that the kind of music where bands cheat in the studio excessively and the band members pretend to perform anal sex on each other?” Apparently, it is, because countless other bands who wanted a piece of fame drew their inspiration from this band and its genre, realizing how cool you could make your music sound without doing a lot. It came to pass that any hope of modern metal regaining credibility was lost. And that loss was speeded along by groups like this one. Infant Annihilator, their debut album, and all other albums remotely related to it are all massive metallic fallacies, and should be treated as such, not as the br00tality wells that they are hailed as. What a disgrace.