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 In case of 90’s death this version is… outdated?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.