Evil Incarnate, from Illinois, has been around, since the 90’s, therefore it should come as no surprise that their brand of extreme music is rooted in that era of death metal.  If you enjoy old-school bands like Vital Remains, Deicide, etc….their early efforts, or if you are just looking for some blasphemous old school death metal, with a raw and organic approach, then please dear reader, continue to read this review.

Lucifer’s Crown is the band’s fourth full-length album.  Mike Eisenhauer, guitar/vocals, Patt Maxwell, drums/keyboards and Rick Garza, bass are hellbent on punishing your soul on this latest release.  10 songs in close to an hour, is a lot to absorb.  “Intro (Prophetic March of the Devils Legion)” starts as a slow build-up, which is ominous in nature before it slides right into “Not My Christ”, which carries part of that intro into the beginning of this song.  A super killer old-school growl from Mike enters with the creepy keyboards.  I really like this atmospheric build-up.  The slow and heavy part brings in all the instruments at the 1:10 mark and I like the keyboards-a lot!  The music eventually picks up speed, a mid-paced crawl erupts, and then the double bass enters the picture with a very catchy chorus.

I enjoy the varying gutturals and more of the higher range, but the lower register vocals are rooted in 90’s era American death metal…..Any song with ominous keyboards, organic productions and 666 growled in one of the verses….well c’mon folks-that is a homerun in my book.  The song gets faster towards the end, never blasting, but it does get fast and provides for some good old fashioned throw up your horns headbanging moments.  At close to 8 minutes, this is the longest song on the album.

“Great Dragon of Thunder” has some unique opening guitar melodies, with some nice organic drum rolls, before the faster moments come in with the quick double bass moments.  Once the song, at the 1:13 part slows down….it really is a killer moment and I love the old-school guttural vocals.  They work so well on this album.  One of the bands I liken Evil Incarnate to is Day of Doom, out of NY, and a band I have reviewed many times on this very site.  Old school satanic style death metal, rooted in the 90s with organic, not processed productions.

Fans looking for the overpowering, often at times, over-processed productions with massive triggers, which can be found all over in the scene and on a variety of different labels, may have difficulty in accepting more of the organic-sounding bands.  For me, I do enjoy all the different productions and new and older bands, alike.  However, I do appreciate the bands who may not have the luxury of expensive-sounding productions, and whose releases sound like they plugged in their amps and mics, pressed record on the boom box, and said ok, let’s run through this fucking album…And it’s not to suggest the production on this album is not well done.  For this style of organic old-school death metal, for me, if it had an overly processed sound, then it would take away what this band is trying to create.

Okay, enough of my production proclivities rants and on to another song….hmmm…let’s see…..I want to talk about  “Seduced by the Devil”, the shortest song on the album, which ends the album.  Some nice stylized primitive blast beats, early on, before the mid-paced moments take center stage, ready to wreak havoc on your soul.  The varying vocal tones are great.  I do love how at around the 1.25 section, the higher register vocals, traverse, back into the deeper bellows, with the mid-paced section sounding heavier because of the deeper vocals.  Pay close attention to this section.  A killer headbanging moment.  The song then slows down more and the keys come on in and the atmospheric build-up, continues to help the song end in this fashion.  An epic sounding song that is only a bit over 4 minutes and not a 12-minute number….sign me the F up.

Evil Incarnate’s Lucifers Crown is a damn good old school death metal sounding, invert the crosses towards hell, kinda album.  I think the band could maybe have the songs punch a bit harder if they scaled back on some of the lengths on some of the tracks.  That is my subjective advice to the band.  Other than that the music and lyrics are in line with the absolutely killer black and grey album cover.  The intricacies and depth of some of this artwork are truly exceptional, thanks to Jenglot Hitam, who did a terrific job.  This album is about turning the crosses towards hell, finding goats and painting pentagrams on their foreheads, but you must be doing this while you’re eating some Chicago deep-dish pizza, mofo’s!

[Visit the band's website]

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