REVIEW: Ingested – The Architect of Extinction [2015]
Artist: Ingested
Album: The Architect of Extinction
Before you know how it got there or what it is, it has spread throughout your entire body. You’re damned: there is no remedy for what ails you. No hope to excise it from beneath your skin or to extrude it from your veins. The second you let it in, the parasite has become a part of you, feeding on your thoughts and stealing from your sanity. This sickness is no mere bug; not a strain of errant genetic code. It is Ingested’s latest full-length release, The Architect of Extinction. Manchester’s most murderous band are back, as the global kings of slam’s latest release is, without a doubt, their magnum opus. Carefully honed riffs cut through the listener’s flesh, while brutalizing blast beats and bone-busting slams take turns crushing the listener with sledgehammer-like blows to their rib age.
I’ll be straightforward: I’m picky about slam and slamming deathcore. However, even at my snobbiest, I could find no fault with the jaw-dropping instrumentation that Ingested bring to the table. Like blast beats? Can’t get enough of blisteringly fast double bass? Then percussionist Lyn Jeffs may as well be your new God. Jeffs’ percussion is positively punishing–especially when combined with the popping, writhing bass grooves let loose by Brad Fuller. Fuller and Jeffs have a simply sinister interplay, especially on “I, Despoiler” or “Endless Despondency,” where Jeffs flows from furious speed to prolapse-inducing, slam laden atrocities, and Fuller makes no fault in keeping pace. Ingested’s instrumental domination continues with the consideration of guitarists Sean Hynes and Sam Yates. Hynes and Yates are as ruthless as they are talented–and they’re very talented. From the first skin-splitting riff in “The Divine Right of Kings” to the echoing drone of disaster at the conclusion of “Rotted Eden,” the dynamic duo leave no creative stone unturned in their exhaustive effort to annihilate the listener. Even in the subtle influences of Melo-death seen in “Penance,” Hynes and Yates are still lurking, never passing up the opportunity to blister, bruise or brutalize the listener’s ears.
If Ingested’s instrumentation is the vector, then the band’s vocals are surely the disease. Jay Evans is the very voice of evil: no two ways about it. Throughout The Architect of Extinction, Evans does just that–carefully detail the means by which the world will cease to exist. With every loathsome gurgle on “Extinction Event,” and every shrieking bree on “The Heirs to Mankind’s Atrocities,” the listener can feel their future slipping into nothingness; feelings of hope decay into despair as Evans reads their funeral rites. Simply put, there is a reason Evans is widely considered as one of slam’s heavyweight vocalists–everything he touches turns to lead, in the sense that it couldn’t possibly get heavier or more lethal.
What more is there to say about Ingested that hasn’t been said. The Architect of Extinction is a picture perfect combination of the band’s previous works. More than a modest continuation of Revered by No One, Feared by All, the act’s latest album contains slam-inflicted atrocities a la Surpassing the Boundaries of Human Suffering with the accessible catchiness and crush of their sophomore full length, The Surreption. The Architect of Extinction is to slam-Deathcore what The Acacia Strain’s Coma Witch was to straight up deathcore: a combination of the finest points of the genre’s heavyweights, with no filler and no remorse. In a word, The Architect of Extinction is relentless.
Even as the sickness perfuses through your veins, you can’t help but grin. If infection by Ingested’s The Architect of Extinction is certain death, then fans of heavy music around the world have a brutally lethal pandemic on their hands.
9/10
For Fans Of: Devourment, Despised Icon, Abominable Putridity, Suffocation
By: Connor Welsh
