By rights, you know, I should hate this. On paper, you'd look at the band description and just chuck this in the bin. “US Deathcore” would have me at the very least thumbing my thesaurus for synonyms of “shit”, while the additional prefix “Christian” would have me rolling my eyes like a Mancunian raver at a strobe light factory. The fact is, that I don't utterly despise this at all. Go figure.
Let's tackle these thorny issues one at a time, shall we? So yeah, This is deathcore. The problem as I see it with deathcore as a whole is that the bands tend to be interchangeable, and mistake chucking a knuckle-headed breakdown in for actual song-writing. Well, though there are plenty of breakdowns to be had here, they're at least 73.2% more tolerable than other bands of their ilk (I had it scientifically tested, just to be sure), with some actual song-writing skills. “Welcome to Forever”, for instance, is a particularly brutal and memorable death metal track, with some interesting guitar work and powerful, decipherable growled vocals. As usual, I must single out drummer Chad Blackwell out for special mention with his accomplished, inhuman drumming. Of course, there are some chugga-chuggas chucked into the mix, but these are thankfully placed within the context of the song and not just placed in for the apparent sake of it. Elsewhere, “More Than Conquerors” had me thinking of prime Kataklysm, with a similarly deep, heavy sound and catchy though still extreme grinding groove to it.
The second issue? Ah, yes, the Christianity topic. To be honest, now that I can look back and see my youth well and truly behind me, I don't have nearly as much of an axe to grind against the Christian church. Don't get me wrong, I'm an atheist, but these days I'm pretty much tolerant enough to recognise that people have their own beliefs, and the rabid (and generally pretty boring) anti-Christianity of heavy metal has started to become a bit tedious. I don't like to be preached at any time – which was what made me wary in the first place. Trouble, of course, are a Christian band, and they never came across as any kind of evangelistic outfit. Luckily, neither do Impending Doom. Their religion is clearly important to them from a lyrical perspective, though I happen to find the lyrics interesting – if for nothing else than to provide a different skew on the general metal topics such as Armageddon, war and the afterlife. For instance, lyrics to “Storming The Gates of Hell” provide an interesting counterpart to decades of Slayer-led Satanism,
“Here We Are, Storming the Gates of Hell
Our Whispers will silence your roars and our roars will wreck your lives
So here we come, we were withered and drowned out
But Raised Up in Son Soaked Brilliance. Raised up!”
Is this a modern classic? Maybe not, but it is a perfectly competent modern extreme metal album, and better than many of their more generic peers. Don't let the labels put you off – listen without prejudice and you may just find yourself pleasantly surprised. I know I was.
http://www.myspace.com/impending
