I own the Ingested albums, and I kinda liked 2018s Level Above Human, 2015s The Architect of Extinction, and 2009s Surpassing the Boundaries of Human Suffering. But I have never really loved the Brits output, preferring countrymates Infant Annihilator  or Dyscarnate when it comes to British slams and breakdowns and always reaching for the likes of labelmates Katalepsy or Kraanium for my slam fix.

However, after seeing them on tour before the lockdown happened with Last 10 Seconds of Life and Visceral Disgorge, I came away impressed with the band’s energy charisma, and certainly, their ability to whip a pit into a frenzy with their breakdown filled metal that treads the perfect balance between slam heavy, modern death metal brutality and bro-entric deathcore (the crowd at the show was certainly more deathcore).

So I thought I’d go ahead and check out their latest effort, the confidently named Where Only Gods May Tread, replete with Dan Seagrave artwork, some surprise guests and massive Christian Donaldson (Cryptopsy) mix/master, signaling the band was truly ready to be big time.

Well, it’s certainly an Ingested album. It’s big and burly, VERY big and burly, to the point of being overproduced, but it certainly allows the band’s focus on monolithic grooves and slams to be rendered with devastating, speaker shaking precision. And while the band adds piecemeal blast beats (i.e. “No Half Measures”) and some occasional ‘maturing’ experimentation here and there such as keyboards on “Impending Dominance”, more doomy passages like “The Burden of Our failures” or “Another Breath”, where Crowbar’s Kirk Windstein awkwardly shows up (other guest appearances include The Acacia Strain‘s Vincent Bennett and Kublai Khan‘s Matt Honeycutt) or the album’s final ambitious, 9-minute track “Leap of the Faithless”, it’s still all about the huge,  loping breakdowns and slams that pummel the listener into oblivion.

And there are plenty; from opener “Follow the Deceiver”, through “Impending Dominance”, “The List”, pummeling favorite “Dead Seraphic Forms”, muscular  duo of “Black Pill”, ( with an opening riff that reminded me of Dyscarnate) and “Forsaken in Desolation”. And all of them certain to get pits back into bloody frenzies again once concerts start happening again.

Unique Leader is having a monster summer of 2020 with Katalepsy, Cordyceps, Cytotoxin, Stillbirth, Exocrine, Ahtme and this which while certainly a predictable Ingested album, has enough development to show the band is growing bit by bit, album by album into an international powerhouse.

[Visit the band's website]

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