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Impending Doom

Baptized In Filth

Written by: PP on 29/05/2012 02:01:39

Impending Doom's "The Serpent Servant" from three years ago was a breakdown obsessed mess of an album which, according to the words of AP, had breakdowns that felt like they lasted several songs in length. It is no surprise then that we skipped its follow-up album in 2010, but we decided to give the band a second chance on their fourth album "Baptized In Filth". It turns out the band's taken on deathcore today is still fairly standard (read: pretty much indistinguishable from the competition), but much improved from the one-chord breakdowns of yesteryear.

In fact, when opening track "Murderer" finishes in its brutally growled "I...AM...A MURDERER" repetition with an exceptionally bleak and dark atmosphere, one is almost tempted to heighten expectations from 'mediocre' to 'good' for the rest of the album, if for no other reason than the band's newly elected approach to use variety and instrumental proficiency to make their songs sound far more interesting than in the past. Yes, the guitars are still super lowly tuned which will irk off any traditional metal fans, but at least they avoid the trap of compressed guitar sound that you run into with pretty much any modern deathcore band these days. Moreover, even the old school metal fans have to admit that some of their death metal inspired riffs are indeed quite brutal in their nature, even if they still needlessly skip onto breakdowns every now and then.

So in that light, Impending Doom seem to be on a similar career progression path as many of their old pure deathcore peers who have since then matured and decided that brutality-for-the-sake of brutality is only fun when you're under 21 years old. "My Light Unseen" might be the one track that throws off the Impending Doom fan base the most though, considering Ryan Clark of Demon Hunter delivers a fully clean vocal guest performance throughout the whole album (a first for this band!), while the instrumentals kind of sound like Deftones meets Metallica meets Staind. The god of irony must be quite pleased when she finds out that the ultimate deathcore band's first stab at a non deathcore sound is better than any other song on the album. Indeed after this song, it's difficult to fully appreciate the rest of the songs because much like Molotov Solution recently, they are decent in their own genre but oh-so-anonymous in nature. Whether it's In The Midst Of Lions, Whitechapel, The Acacia Strain or MS you are listening to, these songs could be on any of their albums without causing much of a fuzz. And that's when you realize that even though Impending Doom have improved and have a few bright moments here and there, they're still a mediocre band overall on "Baptized In Filth".

Download: Murderer, My Light Unseen, For The Wicked
For the fans of: Whitechapel, The Acacia Strain, Molotov Solution, In The Midst Of Lions
Listen: Facebook

Release date 13.03.2012
E1 Music