You have to admire the balls on the PR company that sent out the email for the promos for Imperious, the debut album from Colorado duo Inexorable…”For Fans Of: Dying Fetus, In Flames, Dark Tranquillity, Dimmu Borgir and Children of Bodom“. Fucking hell!!!!!!- Sign me up!

Admittedly, the bait and switch worked on me. Hook, line, and sinker. I was hoping for an fucking epic mix of brutal, slamming, catchy, melodic, symphonic, shredding, Finnish metal. Instead, I got a pretty simplistic form of American, blasting/chugging death metal (not even close to Dying Fetus quality mind you)  with some keyboards here and there (so they sort of cover the Dimmu Borgir claim) . Not a lick of In Flames, Dark Tranquillity or Children of Bodom in sight…*sigh* (or yay?).

It’s not terrible, and occasionally when everything comes together there is some solid symphonic death metal on display here, but its clearly the work of two guys that have slightly bigger ambitions than what they can write. The keyboards (which give me an early Crematory vibe) are used here and there- so this isn’t Fleshgod Apocalypse-type bombast (but hey, they did not throw that in the FFO). And the death metal is a sort of mid-paced with occasional blast style, that sounds a bit too industrial for the symphonic element to gel naturally-and that could be the slightly synthetic production’s fault (the drums of Dustin Smith sound programmed as fuck, though they are not) as well.

But like I said, they occasionally deliver something I can get into, and that’s when they have some sort of more prominent orchestral backdrop to the death metal; In particular, the opening lurch of album starter “Not My Funeral” and the first few, very impressive minutes of closer “One Light”, show some potential. But there isn’t that much else in between with a sort of Kataklysm-y based pace and structure of death metal when there are no keyboards (“Angels Fade”, “Extinction”, “World War Now”). And attempts to be more ambitious fall a bit flat (“The Cage”).

But hey, these guys got together, wrote and recorded an album, got a record deal, and released an album, which is more than my lazy, critiquing ass has ever done. So kudos and keep at it guys.

[Visit the band's website]

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