Infester - To the Depths... In Degradation

Rating: 9.1

Country: USA

Release Date: 1994

Track list:
1. To the Depths (In Degradation)
2. Chamber of Reunion
3. Braded into Palsy
4. Epicurean Entrails
5. A Viscidy Slippery Secretion
6. A Higher Art of Immutable Beauty
7. Clouding of Consciousness
8. Excoriation Killz the Bliss
9. Mephetic Exhumation
10. Outro

Total playing time 53:48

Band Website: Infester

Infester - To the Depths... In Degradation

Jason Oliver - Guitars and vocals
Dario J. Derna - Drums
Todd Stevenson - Bass

This is one of those hidden gems that I came upon entirely by accident. I learned of it in the midst of a discussion about Arghoslent, of all bands. Someone on a forum pointed the song "Braded Into Palsy" as an example of truly effective insertion of racist undertones into death metal. I looked up the lyrics... truly sadistic, but only implicitly racist [the phrase "repulsive ebony skin" is the only real hint of any questionable political leanings on the band's part], but the way in which they were written was downright SADISTIC. Further intrigued, I purchased the album, and holy shit, the lyrics were nothing compared to the music and general ambience of this record. It is most definitely unequivocally SADISTIC.

The general style of the album is closely related to New York Death Metal. The clear emphasis is on brutality, and dark atmosphere, which begs obvious comparisons to NYDM stalwards Suffocation and Incantation. But Infester goes well beyond merely aping those two legendary acts, and incorporates influence from some pretty unexpected sources. Much like Suffocation [somewhat of an ironic influence, given the racist lyrical undertones], Infester clearly has no use for any sort of traditional verse-chorus-verse song structures, instead opting for a free-flowing, quasi-linear approach to arrangement, without a whole lot of thematic repetition in most songs. The most fitting comparison here would be to the first couple of Atrocity albums, though Infester doesn't use nearly as much dissonance. The band also, much like Suffocation, enjoys using that sort of staggered, asymmetrical riffing with flurries of lower-octave grind being held together by strings of palm-muted chords.

There are even a few [gasp] chugging breakdowns on this album [most notably on the title track, "Braded Into Palsy" and "A Higher Act of Immutable Beauty"]. But what separates Infester's use of breakdowns from that of the Internal Bleedings and Devourments of the world is that they're used to buttress the already hideous dark atmosphere of the record, rather than to give scene kids something to dance to. Substantively, they're actually closer to doom riffs, often bearing some sort of synth overlay to de-emphasize the caveman chug. Ultimately, these breakdown sections sound less like pit riffs and more like the doom-laden crawls of Blood Ritual-era Samael and diSEMBOWELMENT. That use of synths is a surprising element setting Infester apart from many of their death metal peers, but rest assured that they don't abuse it the way certain bands did [I'm looking at you, Luciferion]. The synths appear just enough to make a difference and add another macabre layer to an already grim sound, but disappear before they become a nuisance.

And then there's the vocals... possibly the sickest I've ever heard. I always held Chris Reifert of Autopsy to be the gold standard when it came to bowel-spilling sickness in death metal, but Jason Oliver might just rob him of his crown. Oliver's vomits are insanely nasty and guttural, and thoroughly unintelligible, but rather than falling into self-parody the way a lot of slam death types do, these vocals actually sound convincingly demonic.

The production is far from polished, but actually fits the record very well. It's best described as 'necro', sounding a lot like the reverb-soaked horror of Carnage's classic Dark Recollections LP, albeit with better definition on most frequencies. It's rough and grainy, but everything is perfectly audible, though there is some apparent inconsistency in the volume of the percussion - an obvious product of not triggering anything except maybe the bass drums. A remaster would be quite welcome, though, because of the painfully low master volume [think Blessed Are the Sick in its original form] and a somewhat thin guitar tone. It's not anywhere near as bad as Breeding the Spawn, though.

Infester is a band that time unfairly forgot, largely thanks to geography. One would have to think that if they relocated to the opposite coast and changed a couple of lyrical lines here and there, these guys would've made a much bigger impact on death metal than they did. They had a sound that was unique enough to have stolen the spotlight from some of their more prominent, but less inventive contemporaries from the East Coast, and an atmospheric approach that would've been welcome to fans of European death metal during the decline of that scene. As it stands, though, To the Depths has every reason to be called a 'cult classic'.

May 30th, 2007