Review : IMMOLATION – “Majesty and Decay”

Immolation – Majesty and Decay
released March 9, 2010 on Nuclear Blast

Rating : 4.5 / 5

You know, it’s always a breath of fresh air to hear a band that just flat out knows what they’re doing. Immolation are a very fine example of this. While they may not be doing anything incredibly creative, they’re making music that follows a formula that works. Hell, they’ve been at it for nearly 20 years. At that point, it’s pretty hard not to have something down.

This is an album of pure, unrelenting death metal just as the gods intended it to be. There aren’t any insane, shifting time signatures that bands like Necrophagist employ or the soaring melody of the Swedes. The guitars are fast, the drums are reliant on double-kicking, the bass is there to enhance the low-end, and the vocals are nice, deep, raw growls sounding just as they would have back in the early ’90s.

This is an album for the people who just want to hear metal. No bells or whistles, no cheesy Satan-worshipping, and certainly no fluff. This is fun, uncompromising death metal.

A Best of 2010 pick!

FCC OK
Try 2, 4, 7, 9, 11, 12

01. Intro
02. The Purge
03. A Token of Malice
04. Majesty and Decay
05. Divine Code
06. In Human Form
07. A Glorious Epoch
08. Interlude
09. A Thunderous Consequence
10. The Rapture of Ghosts
11. Power and Shame
12. The Comfort of Cowards