Greece’s Infravision have spent the past two years honing their debut slice of progressive death metal art, “This Epileptic Serenity”. A melding of technicality, industrial and electronic elements and quite a generous dose of accessibility, this album is destined to appeal to fans of the more polished US school of death metal, as well as those for whom a mysterious, futuristic edge is an attractive musical feature.
Infravision have a skill for emulating their favourite forebears, providing here a whole collection of crunchy, smack-in-the-face riffs and spiralling, threatening kind of lead work that saw the first light of day with Morbid Angel. There is a thrashy kind of shred to the guitar sound, but it’s not the major feature the band would have us believe; tracks such as “The Virus of Loath”, and especially “Psychotic Tormentor” are obvious aural clues that Infravision grew up listening to an awful lot of USDM, with echoes of everything from Slayer to Deicide rising from the gloom to invoke an involuntary snap of the neck. Although perhaps not gifted with the prominence it deserves on this record, the guitar work here will please pretty much everyone with its energetic old-school power and straightforward metallic charm.
The electronic and industrial aspects might be a little more contentious. “This Epileptic Serenity” opens with the grandiose “Ascending In Vertigo”, a modern classical outburst which resembles a film score in its huge drama, and gives nothing away concerning how Infravision will incorporate these aspects into their sound. It’s a great beginning, but where keyboards and beats appear further down the track-list the results are more hit and miss. “Agoraphobic”, for example, makes ruthless use of industrial breaks and beats, with huge synth atmospheres and melodies combined with ‘crazy’ jazz rhythms, and it’s fairly horrendous, giving the truth to Secret Port’s claim that Infravision sound a bit like Mudvayne. If that doesn’t make you shudder, it should. Combined with the questionable clean vocals of “Life Disconnected” this is music that seems to want to sound less brutal than it does, which is a shame.
“This Epileptic Serenity” is obviously a lovingly created album, and it does incorporate a good deal of variety, particularly with warm, economically structured closer “Descending in Time”, with its unexpected clean female vocals and electronic blips, and “Synthetic Plasma” with its eastern promise. Indeed, it’s definitely not the case that Infravision have ruined some straightforward death metal with industrial aspects; there are tracks, such as the aforementioned “Descending” and “35mg of Hate”, where the band prove that the electronic aspects are an inherent part of their sound, boosting their interest levels way up beyond the plain death metal sections and creating something genuinely creative to hear. I think it’s probably the case, however, that this is a band still struggling a little to discover its true identity. What they’re doing is original, but the component parts are stale. Luckily the band members have the technical skills to rise above, which I’m sure they’ll do on future efforts.
http://www.myspace.com/infravision
http://www.truemetal.org/secretport/
