The Desolate

Inferion has always been a hit and miss band as far as albums go in my opinion. Some people pan them due to the inconsistency (having even released albums with overt nu-metal and metalcore influences such as Given To The Ground and Palingenesis) while others hail them for constantly changing themselves. Therefore, it is important to ignore this fact as much as possible while hearing this release and take the album for what it is. Ironically, this album is also kind of a mixed bag like their discography, but more on that later.

As far as production goes, this is an improvement over their last string of offerings. The music is faster and heavier than it has been in quite some time. It mainly follows the foundation laid on Firewar while adding some more death metal and hard rock tinges. However, the album fails to deliver consistently, which has always been this band's problem.

On one hand, there are some great blackened death metal tracks on the first half of the disc. This half of the disc rages with tons of blast beats, raw and harsh tremolo picked chords, and an unshakable vibe of pure anger. It Began With Blood is by far my personal favorite. It slow things down slightly, but it rages with tons of fast and mid paced parts. The end, however, is excellent. The guitars play an odd dissonant riff that sounds like it is in free time and creates a feeling of being engulfed in a timeless vortex. Needless to say, this album was off to a great start.

Now for the shit end of the stick that is the second half. Some songs on here have a rock n roll aesthetic to them ala current Watain, which is definitely not a good thing. Numerous Lacerations is nothing more than a noise track/intermission (ie. filler material that stops the momentum of the first half dead in its tracks), while Purest Evil and Withering Deities come off as both boring and just plain lazy. Withering Deities is a perfect example of this. It is basically 5 minutes long with the same two riffs played over and over with some bass-snare-bass-snare rock drumming. It sounds like a muddier The Arrival era Hypocrisy song that goes nowhere at all. The rest of the tracks on this half of the album also suffer from this problem towards the end. The drumming is also not that great overall.

To conclude, this is still a decent release in spite of its inherent flaws. It could have great if it kept the massive momentum it had in the beginning. Who knows? Maybe they'll iron out these kinks to their armor by their next release and create something awesome.