Immolation Brings Forth Fire and Brimstone in ACTS OF GOD

After five years the ring of salt around Yonkers, New York has been broken and the flames of hell are seeping back into a changed world. 2017 was the last time death metal four-piece Immolation cast their blistering curse on mortal ears. A lot has happened since then but it seems Robert Vigna (guitars), Ross Dolan (bass and vocals), Alex Bouks (guitars), and Steve Shalaty (drums) see a bigger, bleaker picture altogether. Uninterested in the minutia of the times they delve once more into the woes and failures of humanity on their eleventh studio album Acts of God.

It would waste most folk’s time to introduce a band like Immolation but just in case anyone here is uninitiated this is a band that started way back in mid-80s New York, not long after Seven Churches broke new ground for extreme metal and Chuck Schuldiner was still cutting demo tapes for the newly christened band Death. After a couple of name changes they settled on Immolation and began honing their sound alongside fellow northeastern acts like Incantaion and Suffocation before releasing their genre essential debut Dawn of Possession in 1991.

Acts of God does little to disappoint. After a brief intro track the band launches directly into the fire and brimstone riffs of “An Act Of God”. The guitar work here is weighty and jagged and instantly familiar to fans. It’s what you expect from Immolation and it’s quality material. On this first track the riffs seem to rain down with an almost doomy, descending sensibility. It plummets the listener into the pits and then ignites the darkness with the tremolo opening of “The Age Of No Light” (see video below), a track highlighted by a lightning bolt melodic riff that soars over some of the more restrained drumming on the record. Shalaty’s kit really wakes up on the followup track “Noose Of Thorns” where mind boggling patterns and fills draw the focus beneath ever increasing atmospheres of malevolent dread. This track is an early standout and the first one that I had to go back and play again. Long tenured vocalist and bassist Ross Dolan sounds just as vicious as ever on tracks like “Overtures of the Wicked” where his scorched growls never falter. Lyrically the band delves into the tried and true subjects of organized religion and societal ills, weaving them together in a hopeless sermon on their vision of a world writhing in flame beneath the heel of maniacal zealots and political tyrants. This is the kind of metal you look for at the end of a shitty week. The kind of stuff that asserts that it’s not just you, shit really is fucked. There’s nothing like an affirmation of nihilism like the opening lines of :Incineration Procession”: “Towards the end we march, The flames call out to us, Unstoppable temptation, Our course forever locked”. At fifty-two minutes this album is approaching a length that I could get tired of but honestly, I didn’t find myself reaching any points of apathy here. It’s mean enough to worm it’s twisting, dissonant way into your ear and make itself at home. At the end of the day it’s another heavyweight of the genre doing what they do best and I can’t fault it. Other highlights on the record include the razor sharp march of metallic harmonics on “Broken Prey” and the utter cacophony of “Apostle” that closes the album out.

It’s shaping up to be a good year for metal and this is certainly a record that’s entering my rotation immediately. Grab it on 2/18 from Nuclear Blast and get fucking immolated.