Rating: 5.0

Country: USA

Release Date: 2007

Record Label: Open Grave

Track list:
1. Immersion
2. Forgetting God
3. Dead Eyes
4. Flight of the Fallen
5. Of Service and Suffering
6. Ashes to Dust
7. Prisons of Flesh [mp3]
8. Into Eternity [mp3]
9. Serpents Proclaim
10. A Rage of Angels

Total Playing Time: 50:12

Band Website: Feast Eternal

Feast Eternal - Prisons of Flesh

TJ Humlinski - Guitar, Vocals, Bass
Matt Skrzypczak - Drums
John Greenman - Guitar

Feast Eternal should be grateful that this review was drafted prior to perusing their website, for I was horrified to find proudly emblazoned links to one of the world's most loathsome bipedal life-forms, "Dr." Kent Hovind. He's the creationist that believes that humans and dinosaurs once coexisted (with the latter hunted to extinction by native American Indians!) and, until he was recently locked up for tax evasion, did his very best to force feed the vulnerable with lies, contradictions, offensive (anti-semitic, misogynist, racist, homophobic) propaganda and terrible jokes with the aim to bring down science and evolution (the Devil incarnate, naturally). He is strangely tolerant of incest, useful in jail with his "brothers" and a broomstick. With luck he'll evolve a brain and understand evidence-based logical arguments and the difference between correlation and causation before he gets out. As long as Feast Eternal support the opinions of this conceited ape they may as well throw all their forthcoming With Fire promos out with their waste because they are plankton in a tidal wave of progressive-thinking whales. For the time being I will act with integrity as the noble Mahler toward the spiteful Wagner - study the music of their remastered debut alone and leave it to the likes of Crotchduster to apply their hammer-blow humour to ridicule Hovind and his ilk.

By and large, Feast Eternal opt for a dark old school no-frills approach with immediate riff changes and relentless charging solidity, the most significant influence being Bolt Thrower. It is apparent throughout the long-running album that beginning and ending songs is a major weakness. Introductory verses and pre-choruses range from the unremarkable to the utterly tedious. But the title track MP3 typifies a common and more serious problem. After a stodgy start the atmosphere broadens nicely with heaving atonal chords that mutate into a theme of rebirth after plumbing the depths, introducing a Cathedral-like melody and a more thrashing groove. Up to this point the song progression closely matches the worthy lyrics (the perfect antithesis of Immolation) but what happens next? The lyrics become triumphant but the riffs just recommence from the beginning. Lazy composition and a missed opportunity. It happens in virtually every track too.

"Ashes to Dust" has a welcome Carcass leaning (complete with Jeff Walker vocals) and "Serpents Proclaim" seems to revel in an imperialistic ...For Victory octaved soundscape; quite right too. Otherwise, only "Into Eternity" and "A Rage of Angels" offer any genuine surprise. The former is more consistently energetic and aggressive, mixing up the darker groove of Warmaster with dissonant stabbing chords, heavy muting and better application of drum syncopation. The latter sounds like a different band. The claustrophic and fatiguing raw/live bluntness is gone and the guitars cut through with some of that early 90s Scandinavian buzz. Certainly there is a rich vein of Entombed mined underneath the leads. Unfortunately this newer track still has structural (rinse and repeat) issues and the change in main influences indicates that Feast Eternal do not have the mindset to discover their own sound or style.

Feast Eternal are a long way from some of the dross on the Open Grave roster but there is too much improvement required in too many areas to warrant giving them anything more than "average".

September 8th, 2007