Black Metal History Month: Infernus -"Grinding Christian Flesh"

Going through some of the black metal albums that are building up in my in-box .When you name your album "Grinding Christian Flesh" there is no playing around. So this album is a thick as any death metal album, but is still blast heavy. The vocals are a higher rasp so not deathly, like Archgoat, though the two bands seem to be coming from a similar place. These guys might not have as much of a death metal influence. The punches though to come across more like a death metal band so it's hard to tell what is coming from where in that regard.

These guys can play their instruments brutality be damned. There melodic guitar at the beginning of "Worms of the Casket" makes this fact known , before they default into blasting the mc nasty out of things. There is a wink to Dissection in how they go back into clean guitar. The haphazard need for speed when not tempered with melodic sensibilities , will only go so far for me. the thrashing of "Pagan Warfront" is not full embraced with it feel like the gears are stuck. It is shocking to find out these guys are from Portland , as they have really embraced the right feel. I was thinking they were from  Finland.Speed is handled well on the grinding of "Candles, Horns and Tongues". There are some very Slayer moments, in the drive of the chugs they hit from time to time.

The revert to relying on raw speed for "Sodomfeast" until the bass breaks things up and they reach into their bag of tricks. The song that follows also relies , perhaps to much on speed and I was unaware the song switched over. It's not until they catch up with the more punk rock if the riffs that they have my ear. It seems an unspoken trend with these uber brutal bands that to combat the fifteen minute song some of the hipster black metal bands engage in and instead the condense the songs down to in and out lashings. "Hang the Gutted Christians" find the vocals going into a more Inquisition like croak, before the slowed chunked out riffs hits.

The albums final two songs begin to wrap the album up with the passionate sounds of goats being defiled. They cash in their speed chips once again. "Whore of Christ" , is paced in a almost continuous manner as the previous song. The vocals are spit out more like something Venom would do, though considerably faster. They also hit a Horna cover and an Inquisition cover, but we are just going to focus on the album at hand, which focuses on one dynamic for the bulk, but the other shades of black they paint with work as well. I will round it up to an 8.If you like either of the bands they cover add another point.