INCINERATED - The Epitome Of Transgression LP (Blue Vinyl)

With a name like Incinerated, you'd expect this five-piece death metal lot from Cirebon (West Java, Indonesia) to be a brutal take-no-prisoners beast boasting a fiery aggressive style of music that leaves nothing but scorched earth in its wake. Yes, these guys are as fiery, belligerent and confrontational as you'd expect – but on this, their second album "The Epitome of Transgression", coming nearly five years after debut full-length "Stellar Abomination", the musicians have put much thought and effort in crafting music with dark atmosphere and intricate, layered riffs and melodies in each of the five songs offered here. While Incinerated might have begun as a straight-up death metal act, the dark atmosphere and sonic depths here bring a black metal edge to the music, and the album's theme of humanity transgressing both natural and divine law, in order both to survive and out of wilful choice, might have come straight out of the black metal universe and especially out of its darker and more dissonant realms.

From start to finish, listeners are truly immersed by force into a complex machinery of melodic black / death metal that takes them on a nightmare emotional journey. The speed of the music doesn't allow listeners to relax and settle but instead keeps hurling them into darker and more disturbing depths of emotion and being. For some people, the album's 35+ minute playing time may be more than enough and for others, the music isn't long enough – or it may be too fast and complex – for them to get much of a handle on it. I honestly think the album could have included one more track and maybe another short ambient experimental piece for a really immersive experience, in which a chance of redemption or hope for humanity might be present, however briefly.