Ignivomous
Contragenesis

December 2012
Released: 2012, Nuclear War Now! Productions
Rating: 3.0/5
Reviewer: Metal-Rules.com UK Team

Hailing from Australia, Ignivomous plays a fast but technical version of Death Metal inspired by bands like Immolation, Angelcorpse and Incantation. "Contragenesis" is their second full length album of new material (their previous release, "Blood and Mercury", was a compilation of demos and older EP's), and it presents the band with production in which fast drums and grinding guitars are brought to the forefront, burying the bass, while vocals compliment the stream of noise that the band creates.

Ignivomous balance out the speed with some slower sections, in which guitars switch to either a low, heavy, groove, or dissonant riffs to create tension. In this, they sound like bands who play the style commonly known as "New York Death Metal".



The record starts with "Damnatio Memoriae", a slow intro featuring feedback while drums plod along. This leads almost immediatelt to "Heritage of the Jackal" and here's where the listener might draw similarities to the bands previously mentioned. The guitar work is pretty much inspired by Incantation with its fast tremolo picking riffs. Like said band, Ignivomous also balance out their faster material with some Doom Metal-inspired riffs, and the transitions between both are marked by odd tempo signatures and abrupt changes. In songs like the fast "Seventh Seal Gnosis" and the slower "A Rotting Faith Condemned", the band manages to create very eerie, evil sonic landscapes through the use of such techniques, and the guitar work sometimes rises above to the level of truly inspired. The album closes with "The Final Cadence to Bloodshed", which begins with a slow, thunderous riffs that pick up speed as the song goes along, eventually leading up to a faster section while the guitars take on dark, twisted, dissonant but melodic Death Metal riffs, pretty much summarizing the rest of the album.



This release by Ignivomous is a very technical, precise, unscrupulous release that may take a while for some listeners to get used, as the sound is just all over the map. Yet, the guitar work here is truly inspired, and the drumming by Volcano is a totally ruthless excercise in technicality within Extreme Metal. The songs are built from many elements of Extreme Metal from Past and Present, and while the band wears their influences on their sleeves, they do justice to these bands with a record that proves that this band can sure rough it up with the best of them.



Review by Titus Isaac