So here is last of fledgling Blast Head Records’ three initial releases. Hailing from Roanoke Virginia, Human Infection self released Infest to Ingest last year, but Blast Head picked it up for release earlier this year, and unfortunately of the labels first three releases, this is my least favorite.
Human Infection play death metal. Bog standard American death metal that’s part brutal death metal, and part technical death metal. And to be quite honest, there’s nothing wrong with that, and there’s nothing really wrong with this album, other than it’s just ‘there’. It blasts, rumbles and growls with aplomb, culling from the usual US suspects like Cannibal Corpse, Suffocation and some of the brootal Unique Leader styled stuff, but the cookie cutter songs and strangely rendered vocals just make the album rather uninspired.
Not that there is anything truly bad on Infest to Ingest, it’s just that there’s nothing really good either. All the musicians can handle their instruments and as far as American death metal goes, it checks all the boxes for all the requisite elements. But for all the tightly produced chugging, stomping and blasting, there’s nothing on any of the songs that caught my attention. The whole affair just seems to be going through the motions and the result is a cold, lifeless collage of familiar death metal tropes. But like I said, its nothing really bad, it’s just……generic death metal. nothing more nothing less. My only big gripe are the vocals of Andrew Brown which just seem to be a deep, gravelly gasping growl that lack real power or force. I wish i had more to say about the likes of “Unspeakable Acts of Violence”, “Perversely Possessed”, “Vile Disposal” and 7 minute album closer “The Seed of Madness” (even those second had Cannibal Corpse song titles are just blah), but to be honest all the tracks are so derivative there’s not much to convey, especially where there is so much more better death metal out there right now.
Ultimately, I hate to be hard on these guys and a new label but Human Infection lack the technicality of label mates Parasitized and the bludgeoning heft of other label mates Splattered Entrails. But two out of the first three isn’t bad and I really like what I’ve heard from the upcoming release by Tombthroat, so stay tuned to this young label.
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Parasitized are definitely the shit.
on May 1st, 2012 at 07:35Dear, “E. Thomas”;
Hello, this is Andrew Brown of Human Infection. Thank you for writing this review, of course I don’t agree with it’s contents but I respect that you are honest and hopefully people will still check out the music to decide for themselves. My question is this: what are some specific things you found wrong with my vocals? I am only 18 and could use some help as to which areas I need to improve on.
on May 14th, 2012 at 15:23