I actually got this promo in the fall of 2024. I immediately enjoyed it, planning on doing a review for its early 2025 release, but as usual, life, other promos, and work got in the way, and I forgot about it.

But here we are, and let’s get to it. Adorned with a wonderfully 90s cover featuring one of my childhood haunts, Whitby Abbey in Yorkshire, Infested Angel is a black/death metal dou healing from Birmingham, and their style is a throwback as their cover art, that could be a Misanthropy, Black Mark or Cacophonous Records cover, and probably these guys would have been a perfect fit for the UKs Cacophonous records back in the 90s.

That is to say, this is very mid 90s-sounding black/death metal; dual vocals, a hint of melody, some atmosphere, and some generic if solid riffing that recalls a little of Epoch of Unlight, Ancient, a synthless early Bal Sagoth, and some of the era’s melodic-death and such. It’s not stunning, but it’s got a nice, gruff presence amid the melodic black death metal undercurrent.

That said, after my initial enjoyment, nothing truly stands out, like much of the mid-90s saturated genre didn’t. I can’t really hang my hat on any single song or riff amid the 13-song, (inc.2 interludes) 1 hour run time. Vocalist/ guitarist Andrew Bryan has a nice gruff bellow and occasional scream and kicks out oodles of earthier, blasting riffs, and tracks like “The Lost Battle”, “Misanthropic Elegy”  and “Darkness Envelops” in the album’s latter stages, that sort of got my attention, (“The Lost Battle” has a nice piano bridge, and “Darkness Envelops” has a sturdy, militant march).

But when it’s all said and done, the album is generic, if enjoyable in the short term, much like some of the mid 90s bands they sound like. But certainly, they have some potential, even if there are more vicious or more brutal choices out there right now, as Ingested Angel sort of sits in the middle ground on everything.

[Visit the band's website]

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