Unused Imaginative Capacity

Sometimes I’m fascinated by the amount of music available. Feels like you can always satisfy your need for even the most obscure genres (not that old school death is so obscure). There are people with unused imaginative capacity (like the album title btw) who are keeping the genre alive. Intrepid might be doing this at the expense of their talent. And even though the music is great it feels like the band had artificially limited themselves by implying that they are old school death.

I think the worst part about saying that you are old school black or progressive frog metal is not that you’re limiting your potential audience. That’s more or less irrelevant. The problem is that you have set very narrow boundaries for yourself. Not only you have to play death, but you also have to play a very specific version of it. In case of 90’s death this version is… outdated? It was important for the growth of the metal as a whole, but right now there is nothing you can do to improve it.

It becomes apparent on the first track that these guys are quite skilled musicians, and they play their instruments very well. There is no shortage of nice riffs and lead guitar interplay is very engaging. It feels more like a thrash-death hybrid in vain of early Sepultura but with more lead sections. Behold the Scourge has a very nice slowish section where lead guitar shines with its great tone and memorable picking pattern going straight to the solo. Suicidal Necessity and Insidious Plague exercise some very welcome deathgrind. They as well offer memorable chorus riffs and for whatever reason there is a very brief breakdown in Insidious Plague. Closing tracl is epic. Band gradually slows down and shows that they can create some good slow passages with dark creeping atmosphere. In the end there is enough of everything to not get bored.

The album feels surprisingly airy for what is supposed to be old school. Instruments sound is not overly congested, and you can distinguish what is being played well. What I dislike the most is the way how the sound quality was downgraded. To my ear this album sounds like it was recorded on a good equipment and afterwards downscaled by applying a single muffling filter. Despite this lead vocals sound unusually crisp and understandable. Of course you can record this way, but in this particular case it has been done quite poorly. The result is that this album is in between and feels awkward. There is too much detail for 90’s death but not enough for a modern disc. The other thing that bugs me is that the parts where this album is less old school sound more interesting. Every band member clearly shows his talent but ultimately continues to play what has been done before many times. After this album I really want to hear technical death album from Intrepid. They have the needed musicianship skills and memorable songwriting to grace this world with something like Diminishing Between Worlds or even straight up discover something new.

This is a good album but this kind of 90’s death is very limiting. If you like it - go for it. hope Intrepid will continue to expand their style and improve upon it.

You’ve got to be a bit careful when calling your debut album something like Unused Imaginative Capacity, just in case anyone uses it as an insult against you. At least that’s not as bad as calling your band Lifeless (like 8 groups on MA), Useless (2 of them), or even Shit, which has surprisingly been chosen twice. At least Intrepid sounds pretty positive and, on the whole, I’m pretty positive on what this Estonian quintet has to offer. All the members were born after the year 2000, which might turn away fans of old school death metal, but rest assured that they know how to handle their instruments and incorporate traditional ingredients into their technical compositions.

I’m not normally in the mood for a lot of blasting and fast riff changes, so everything has to be just right for me to enjoy death metal in its pure form. Here, a bold production helps a great deal, keeping all instruments in order and punching at maximum capacity, more or less what opener ‘Pierced by Hatred’ is designed to do. The assault isn’t limited to raw aggression though, opting for unsettling melodies at mid-pace during ‘Behold the Scourge’ and lengthy lead guitar jamming in the intro to ‘Suicidal Necessity’. The 2 guitarists thus work hard to elaborate on basic riffs, rarely letting the same pattern run too long without changing something. Equally, the drums linger over everything, going for double kick as often as blasting and also peppering fills into more gradual moments. Call it variety, but I recognize a lot of specific old school nods, sometimes pinching the guitar tone of Obituary or a moment of a solo from Entombed - hell, ‘Behold the Scourge’ has a part that sounds like Megadeth’s ‘Devil’s Island’. There’s certainly a lot less modern influence than one might expect from a group of 18 year olds.

To pick out an album from amongst a sea of OSDM, however, remains difficult purely for the fact that so many exist. Intrepid probably won’t stand out any more than another competent new band, since the way they approach the sound is to please fans of early ‘90s death and no one else. In some ways, Unused Imaginative Capacity might actually be a prophetic title, playing a little like an audition of deathly styles: ‘Caustic Reign’ sees the lads take a shot at grindcore, ‘Insidious Plague’ drops a brief beatdown, and closer ‘Methodical Chaos’ proves they can write something more epic too. This will likely attract plenty of local attention and give Intrepid a chance at playing to bigger audiences, though we mustn’t get carried away.

The outstanding feature for me must be the lead guitar, since the effects and tones used are so evocative of Morbid Angel and Death and their ilk (New York doom death mavens Winter too, for some reason), drawing images in intricate detail for the listener to wax nostalgic or escape into other realms. Occasionally, a reliance on noisy squeals or bland riffs kills the uncanny vibe a little, yet doesn’t harm the total experience. I’d say that Intrepid used about three quarters of their imaginative capacity to cook up a solid debut album.