When I blindly downloaded the promo for the second album from Turkey’s Inhuman Depravity, I was fully expecting an utterly ‘broodle’ death metal onslaught of Comatose Records proportions. what I got was a far more varied and surgical old-school technical death metal record that reminded me if bands like Suffocation, Deeds of Flesh, and in large part, Sinister.

And while the similarity is in part to Lucy Ferra who sounds like one-time Sinister vocalist Rachael Heyzer, it is also due to the deft songwriting and production, which has that distinctly Sinister-y, twisty, shifty, slicing discordance mixed with savage melodies and unpredictable time changes.

And along with Ferra’s primal roars, all the other members deliver top-notch performances that you’d expect from a veteran US death metal band from the early 00s late 90, especially riff monger and lone remaining member/founder since the band’s 2013 debut, Murat Sabuncu.

Starting with a sample from the classic horror film The Reanimator”, the opener “Obsessed with the Mummified”, is a track that quickly cements the named influences, and has a surprisingly nifty mid-song groove which really cemented the Sinister vibe and got me truly vested in what the band was doing. Then you get “Mescannibalismus” a simple, effective blunt force trauma number with some very cool tempo and time changes that add some more cement.

There is a bit of a curveball with the third track “Burnt to Exist” with an opening riff that might be more at home on an In Flames records, but it soon takes a serpentine, slow twist that again imbues,,,, you guessed it Sinister.  The opening riff the “Whole Body Radiation” is a killer, paint-peeling riff that highlights Sabuncu’s creativity as well as his influences.

The rest of the album is pretty much more of the same with an ample mix of churning, gnarled, slower riffs and razor-sharp atonality colliding with utmost confidence and skill highlighted by “As I Tell You to Kill So”, vicious “Death 22” and closer “Beyond Rythmn Zero”, (with another Reanimator sample to close out) which at just over 4 minutes long is the album’s longest cut, highlighting Inhuman Depravity‘s, no bull shit, direct approach to excellent death metal.

[Visit the band's website]

---

Comments