Focus Reviews

Infernaeon - A Symphony Of Suffering
Style: Death Metal/Black Metal
Running Time: 31 Minutes and 3 Seconds
Label: http://www.prostheticrecords.com


If you're one of the few people that still get excited during an intro to an album, then the opening song on Infernaeon's debut album for Prosthetic Records entitled "Shades Of Obscurity" is going to enthrall you. The vast majority of intros that lead into albums have absolutely no point of being on that album, and quite frankly this isn't exactly an out of place intro so much as it doesn't accurately reflect the following 30 minutes of actual music. Sure theres playful keyboard work that almost echoes the classical ambiance of Infernaeon's album opener but as for the rest of the musical work on this album, its rather standard blackened death metal.

"Embodiment Of Sin" is the albums first honest to goodness real track and it doesn't really strike me as something wholly original. Their press sheet would have me believe that Infernaeon has a purpose and that is to 'unleash original underground metal'. This purpose, seems to have not been completely met with their first offering "A Symphony Of Suffering". Thats not meant to completely degrade the work on "A Symphony Of Suffering", because by no means is it absolutely stagnant waters that Infernaeon seem to trudge through. Rather it is meant to say that though the band has potential, they don't display an awful lot of talent in creating new, fresh sounding metal.

The first real qualm with this album that many people have pointed out, has to be the horrible sounding snare drum. The rest of the music is brought forth almost perfectly, however that snare drum sound just irks people for some reason. Its very reminiscent of an older death metal album, sure it sounds like drummer Nick Agusto is banging on a cardboard covered trash can lid but I can't honestly fault the band for wanting this sound. It's fairly obvious they wanted this sound because with Erik Rutan behind the complete mastering of this album I'm sure the drums could have sounded better. Throughout the entire album vocalist Brian Werner's screams are a bit boring in all honesty, they lack enthusiasm most of the time. Though he has a great style befitting the band I just get bored listening to this album. Sticking with the vocals of this album people have made claim that Brian Werner, at the end of 'Sleeping God' holds a scream for 40 seconds. The real time of it is from 4:40 on the song to 5:12, thats 32 seconds people, it's still impressive yeah, but rounding up probably wasn't the way to go.

The albums saving grace is the guitar work in almost all songs, some fantastic riffs are thrown about, It's too bad that its not entirely consistent on the album that every riff sounds fantastic. But hey, if there were too much fretwork wankery people would complain of that too. The solo work on this album is fantastic as well the band doesn't go wrong in any department with their guitar-work. The keyboards throw the guitars sometimes and it leaves an unsatisfying taste in my mouth listening to them but overall it adds some good moments to the discs 31 minutes of play time.

It's unfortunate that Infernaeon didn't exactly deliver an original underground metal album here, however what works for them doesn't exactly work for everyone and the style mixing they pull off is good but faulted on many levels. Hopefully with more time and a stronger, better release I can say more good things about this band in the future.

Score: 5.5/10