The Extinction of Benevolence

“The Extinction of Benevolence” is Internal Bleeding’s second full length album released June 24th of 1997 and it is a fantastic brutal death metal record. Absolutely brutal, evil, and unrelenting, yet catchy and memorable at the same time. It’s a classic for anyone who wants to get into the sub-genre of brutal death metal or seasoned veterans alike.

The vocals preformed by Frank Rini are extremely impressive on this project, his gutturals are so deep it’s almost inhuman, even compared to their last full length album in 1995 ,“Voracious Contempt”. The bass guitar is not as prominent in the mix as the last album, but now the guitars are a lot sharper, more distorted, and fuzzy. It also feels a lot more technical than the last album, like they experimented with different kinds of song structures and grooves because in the last project it felt like it was mostly comprised of slow slam riffs while the blast beats and other sections were shelved a little bit. However this album feels a lot less predictable like yeah they’re gonna blast and they’re gonna slam but it feels like there’s more variety and substance there with the way they blast, slam, and how they get there.

Personally this is definitely my favorite album of theirs in their entire discography. I find it so much more memorable and fun to listen to than their other albums. It’s definitely my favorite sound they ever had because I don’t like the low chunky guitar distortion that they end up adopting in their later albums or the vocalist that takes up Frank Rini’s spot after he leaves the band. I much prefer metal with that really sharp guitar distortion like displayed on this album than the chunky distortion that takes up a lot of the 2000’s and early 2010’s, it just sounds a lot more brutal to me and that’s what i’m listening to death metal for in the first place, the brutality.

The intro is separated into its own track this time unlike the last album and it is kinda underwhelming compared to the rest of this album as it is just some quiet, low, droning synths. in my opinion i could do without it, it’s a pretty insignificant 50 seconds of the album and it either could’ve just been merged with the second track to be an intro for that song or just not existed at all. That’s really my only criticism with this album though as the rest of this project is really good. The intro for the 6th track “Plagued by Catharsis” has to be one of my favorite intros in death metal, the drums start off the song for the first 12-13 seconds and then the guitars and the gutturals come in together at the same time and it just sounds so evil. I also personally don’t especially like guitar solos in brutal death metal as they tend to feel out of place in between the blasts, slams, and gutturals and there is little to no guitar solos on this album which I can appreciate.

In my opinion, other than the intro track, every song is great. They’re all lengthy and full of brutality, groovy slams, technical song structures, and memorable moments. The performances on this album are impressive to say the least and I highly recommend it for anyone who might like early Dying Fetus or early Mortal Decay.