Ignorance Supremacy

It's difficult to point to a single album and say that this is the standard example of its adopted style, this is the album that presents things in their most recognizable and easy to understand state. To be clear, what is intended by standard is not what is so incredibly amazing that every other album should hope to successfully emulate it, but more so an album that checks every box in the most obvious and predictable fashion, being decent yet so utterly by-the-numbers that it falls short of greatness. Applied to the specific context of brutal death metal, while it is even more difficult to truly pinpoint a singular album and say that this is the most middle of the road approach to the style, one of the prime candidates would have to be Italian prognosticators of brutality Sickening's 2008 debut LP Ignorance Supremacy.

In a decrepit nutshell, this album is the perfect embodiment of how all of the distinct elements that make up a modern, mid to late 2000s brutal offering can be merged together into an easy to follow almost to the point of being contrived fashion. Relative to their subsequent works, this has the greatest affinity for the more classic thrashing sound that Cannibal Corpse set as their own template in the mid-2000s, while also incorporating the most blatant degree of slam moments after the fashion of Pathology's offerings from around the same time. Most of the quirky and jarring shifts in rhythm and feel that would emerge on later releases are absent, with each segment smoothly and seamlessly moving to the next, with very few moments that could be considered either technical or otherwise out of the ordinary.

To be fair, these anthems of atonal violence with a somewhat wittier lyrical approach relative to the throngs of amateur forensics writers of the style are solid and pretty fun when taken in moderate doses. Of particular note in presenting a set of bludgeoning riffs and perfectly timed fits and starts, "Biolence" stands as one of the high points and carries the heavy amounts of deep, down-tuned grooves well enough while occasionally cycling through some fairly busy segments. The more blast-happy and deep thudding "In Torment's Pain" also does a solid job of translating the stylings of early Cannibal Corpse into an even danker context, almost achieving what Butchered At Birth might have were it's production meatier. Pretty much everything else on here is almost as competent as these two standouts, though the formula gets a bit played out after 3 or 4 songs.

While this isn't the greatest thing to come out of the Italian brutal death scene, let alone the entirety of said movement within death metal, this is probably one of the first albums that should be recommended to someone looking to crossover from the old school death sound into the brutal and slam subsets. Among the many flaws that come into play with this formulaic approach is that the bands of the early to mid 90s that influenced it threw in a lot more technical flair to space out all of the similar sounding riff segments. There are no really noticeable points where this band cuts loose, and the two guitarist format here is almost superlative given that neither of them rip out a solo at any point or otherwise do anything other than double the rhythm section. It's like a plain sponge cake with no frosting, it's solid and tastes good for the first couple bites, but looses its kick thereafter.