Rating: 8.3

Country: Spain

Release Date: 2006

Record Label: Pathos Productions/Voliac

Track list:
1. Insignia
2. March of The Brute
3. Untermensch
4. Hunger Among Wolves
5. Only The Strong Should Dominate
6. Messiah To Burn
7. Falling For Wotan
8. I'm Still The Lone Revengeful Wolf (Live)
9. Inmortal Fever of Desire (Live)
10. Symbols of Decrepitude (Live)


Band Website: Fermento

Fermento - Insignia

Robert - Guitar, Bass, Vocals
Franco - Guitar
Nuno - Drums

Fermento, the horrifically underrated Spanish brutal death metal band have been around for almost two decades and with Insignia they have reached their target of producing one full-length per decade a bit before time. Comparisons to their previous album Symbols of Decrepitude, Symbols of Supremacy are rendered irrelevant, as on Insignia their original music is effectively and rather grotesquely turned inside-out and upside-down. It would thus be like comparing food with vomit.

After a typical war-intro, “Insignia” at once attacks you with a wave of acidic vomit expelled from the speakers, sweeping you to the corner of your room where you begin dissolving in it. There immediately you are reminded of Artgore, another underrated album by the French death metal band Morgue. Like them, who within their thick vicious torrent of scalding riffs infuse dark and sludgy Incantation riffs, Fermento use similar muddy and intoxicating riffs of Morbid Angel. What sets this band apart from the hordes of other wannabe dark brutal bands is the tangible sickness that pervades their music, making you cough at least twice. “March of the Brute” is a short and bold instrumental song styled entirely on Morbid Angel, what with its brooding, entrancing riffs and capricious leads. “Untermensch” with its Immolation touches and “Hunger Among Wolves” are two stupendous brain-numbing songs displaying Fermento's technical disposition, insinuating their way into your brain like a pork tapeworm and in time, debilitating it. You are bound to scream after getting helplessly lost in the sick myriad structure of their songs that are comparable to bands like Cenotaph (Turk) and Dyscrasia, consisting of amiable plodding, haphazard toxic riffs and inertia fooling stop-parts that are resumed by riffs of a completely different nature. Not surprising at all, for all their brutal songs with the exception of the instrumental are at least five minutes long.

“Hunger Among Wolves” also features a distinct guitar interlude which is later on lapped up by riffs that seem to dwell in the black metal neighbourhood. “Messiah To Burn” is a rampant song not too unlike the ultra brutal ones from Colombia. Starting from this song, Yattering influences circa Human's Pain/Murder's Concept begin to rear their ugly alien head with their accomplice Damnable. Their intractable technicality which radiates an extraterrestrial quality is unmistakable. This is recreated along with a similar lead in “Only The Strong Should Dominate”, a song with undertones of drowsy Morbid Angel riffs, and then in the seven minute epic, “Falling For Wotan” with the menacingly intruding and insentient riffs from Murder's Concept. Though the production is not as clear, was probably never intended to be in the first place, the drummer ensures that you do not yearn excessively for that band. In the vocal department too, there is a considerable lot that is happening: animated reeing, inchoate growls and tormented shouts and screams.

A quibble I have with this version of the album is that the sound level is really low; it requires great courage to set it to a satisfactory volume, for there is always the danger of it exploding on your face. A bit surprising as this has been re-issued by Pathos Productions – I guess my highness was expecting it to be re-mastered as well. Also, the three live songs thrown at the end as bonus are dispensable at best, thanks to their appalling sound quality.

Insignia is like exploring the nightmarish territories of hell itself, where the uneven and tortuous dark passages are gloomily illuminated by blood-coloured riffs; where the paths are festooned with the screaming and anguishing half-alive torsos deformed beyond description; where there is a constant ominous dread of uncertainty one would feel being in a simulated environment managed by the evil incarnate himself. You trudge wearily through it, so drained of bodily blood leaking out into your surrounding, that you often lapse into a sweet painless trance, heedless to your precarious walking on the edge of an unfathomed dark abyss, its eyes flickering at you with fiery delight.

July 3rd, 2007