Chaos Inception - The Abrogation

#FOR FANS OF: Death Metal, Morbid Angel, Hate Eternal, Immolation

Alabama is usually not on the tops of too many lists when it comes to hotbeds for Death Metal, but if Chaos Inception is going to keep up with albums like this it won’t be long before the state starts moving up. Already two albums in, these scene vets, populated from acts Fleshtized, Blood Stained Dusk, Monstrosity and Quinta Essentia to name a few, offer forth one of the most relentless and harsh sonic attacks in the genre and create one of the more impressive efforts in an overcrowded yet prolific scene with their sound honed and refined much further than previous records showed. Rather than opting for that cavernous, sprawling landscape so often associated within the scene, this goes back to the start with a tight, ferocious sound that favors the guitars first and foremost with their unrelenting brutality that manages to make the songs far more ferocious due to the ravenous assaults in the riff-work as it adds a series of technical riff-work, sharp leads and a tight framework throughout that makes for a raging hellstorm that populates the landscape. Never a true brutal Death act nor a full-on technical one either, instead both form together with a traditional backbone created by the thunderous bass-lines, unrelenting and explosive drum-work to not only propel the songs forward at a devastating pace but also display a far greater sense of dynamics, mood variation and tempo changes than would normally be the case in either styles’ true by-products, leaving this to fall in as a traditionally-sounded death metal band with a brutal streak dominated by far more technicality than what is normally on hand, leaving this a solid, raging effort in the best tradition of the old-school giants. A rather notable but unnecessary highlight that this album is glossed in a crystal-perfect production that highlights every riff, every thunderous drum-blast and renders the vocals deep and growled to perfection is to be commended. If one is to find flaw in this one, which is nit-picking of the highest order, it’s that the band tends to employ the same rhythmic pattern throughout where the songs sound pretty close to one another throughout. The album-opening title track does strike a few nice chords with a bass-solo surprise, but the main rhythms and pace are copied throughout the majority of the tracks. "Phalanx (The Tip of the Spear)" includes some rather pleasing riff-work and a charging atmosphere, but the drum attack and solo section are repeated in here as well. The album’s best tracks, the threesome of "Lunatic Necromancy," "Pazuzu Eternal" and "Hammer of Infidel" do offer up minor chord differentials and pattern changes to distinguish them from the others, whether it be the unyielding guitar work of "Lunatic," a series of sharp bass-lines and frantic technicality through "Eternal" or the extreme brutality in "Infidel." Really, though, each of these songs does contain a number of repetitious patterns and riffs that doe make the whole effort sound remarkably similar to each other, but the sheer energy, aggression and unwavering technicality that moves through these brutally concise tracks makes them fun regardless of how similar they may be, and that alone is the bands’ best trick so far and really offers them great hope for the future. (Don Anelli)

(Lavadome Productions - 2014)
Score: 85

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