The breeding ground for uncouth 90's death metal has grown more popular than it was during its heyday as a myriad outfits continue their mechanized, bloody advance to claiming their testators' legacy (i.e. Suffocation, Cryptopsy, Morbid Angel, etc.) but fruitfulness in such endeavors has rarely been the case. In other words, enter the dialectic of Incinerate third record ''Eradicating Terrestrial Species'', and the testy death metal listener will instantly realize that he/she has already run the gamut of the band's cadaverous gestalt of brutal/technical death metal, with almost zero new tricks to satisfy the culinary appetite which one may have hoped ravish. Playing like a manic, defunct tutorial for disfiguring ugly extra-terrestrials, this international cooperation leaves much to be desired, (Dave Rotten and Rogga Johansson created some of the most ill-bred sonic abuses of recent history with ''Macabre Kingdom'' in 2012, and we all know what a blast that was) but less to be acquired...
Comatose Music has had the honor of governing such depraved and bombastic retro-90's death metal acts like Incinerate, though the department's been generally running low on originality. Incinerate plucks at the strings of Hate Eternal, Cryptopsy, Suffocation, Florida obscures Brutality and Disincarnate and Immolation more than the cavern-core worship bands these days usually vie for, and even the production values have been altered somewhat to patch in with that gruesome production of the 90's. Before I gone on to scold how much this record lacks proper clinical galvanization, let me point out that the 90's mechanics are perfectly in place, and the riffs are densely punishing enough to come close to the aforementioned groups, with dredged up technical punishment and furious tremolos delivering most of the album's fundamental butchery, and treacly chugs gulping away at the listener's ear with systematic tension and ugliness.The drums contain enough fills and frenetic double-bass convolution to sound tantalizing, at least to an extent; add to that a metallic, grinding base line and everything seems in place to become the bonafide tech-death offering of the year, but the tracks are so interchangeable that it feels like musical equivalent of dull paint job.
I frankly enjoyed the overt presentation of gore, religion and science-fiction tropes, but aside from the few cheesy film sequences sandwiched in between or before some of the tunes, the concepts did nothing for the theatricality of the album. Incinerate is constantly technical, but they obdurately lack the quality to modify themselves throughout the record. Jesse Watson's vocals are the typical growls you were expecting, providing little anguish or trauma. They go excessively deep sometimes, and the cavernous lows mixed with the unsavory technicality generate something of a Demilich current, but once again, pleasure is stifled. Perhaps my favorite track here was ''The Berzerker'', which sounds characteristically similar to all the other tracks but has a intro featuring Shelley's poem ''Ozymandias'' as the only moment which was elevated to auditory limelight in the entire song. This is 30 minutes of unscathed brutality that feels long enough after the first spin. Evocative? I doubt it. Pure calculated ordure, and a fine piece to listen while you're raging over your maths project, I imagine. Yet this scarcely pushes the imaginative expanse of anyone's mind, and I certainly enjoyed some of the surgical guitar work and intensity, I won't hesitate to say Incinerate's got a better compendium of cult horror/sci-fi films than masterful riffs.
Highlights:
Fucking the Rotten Nun
The Bezerker
From Distant Worlds
Rating: 50%
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