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Infernal > Infernal > Reviews
Infernal - Infernal

Hell ain't a bad place to be - 85%

Felix 1666, December 12th, 2020
Written based on this version: 1999, CD, Hellspawn Records (Digipak)

Infernal were a great promise at the end of the last millennium. There was just one tiny little problem. This promise was never kept. Instead of producing a proper discography, the releases became more and more sparse and it all ended with the suicide of David Parland. Thus, the EP presented here remained the most voluminous work of the band, although it also has only four songs to show. Parland and his quite prominent comrades-in-arms like Matte Modin (Dark Funeral, Defleshed and more) celebrate over 16 minutes of typical Swedish metal of the blackest variety. The name of the band describes the aura of the EP perfectly, the tempo is constantly high and the voice knows only one pitch, namely the roughest possible. However, excessive distortion is avoided and keyboards are also not used. Thus, "Infernal" has a very generic-metallic approach and that is likeable.

The dense production avoids sonic unevenness. It supports the musical frontal attack in the best possible way. If you compare this production with Dark Funeral's first EP, you will find more sharpness, more aggression and more hostility towards everything and everyone. To highlight a single song makes little sense, as they are all cut from the same cloth. The effectively integrated tempo changes (from very fast to ultra-fast and back) give the material a dynamic outfit, the guitars strike exclusively black-metal tones and the solos also contain an appropriate portion of rebellion and resistance. All in all, the cover, the music and the lyrics form a successful unit and only the band's own style description "Satanic Holocaust Metal" gets on my nerves because of its stupidity. But please, some clever marketing expert must have gone wild.

It’s sad that such a competent musician committed suicide, but it seems that too many demons had taken control of David Parland. However, this EP is one of the best pieces of his musical legacy. Hopefully, he has found a peaceful place in hell or anywhere else. I would not be surprised if he and Jon Nödtveidt can confirm the old finding of Bon Scott: Hell ain’t a bad place to be.

Satanic Holocaust Metal - 90%

oneyoudontknow, May 31st, 2007

Merciless and like a hellish thunderstorm, loaded with the infernal hate of the Dark One Infernal’s debut crushes upon the listener, the worthless, wretched mortal human being, this entity of flesh, whose existence is merely a live-through of pain and suffering. With each riff, each hit on the drum kit and each vomited diabolical phrase, the feeble soul gets more and more excruciated, to finally loose itself in the eternal pandemonium of satanic Black Metal. Again and again those waves smite against the wimpy human soul to finally cleanse its inner spirit from all that is good, so that like on scorched earth a new sprout can set the stage for a new era, an era no longer burdened by the cross of the self-proclaimed holder of the holy truth.

Love, peace and harmony are far away from this band, so are progressive sound-writing, keyboards and clean vocals. The contrast is the case. With roots in bands like Setherial and Dark Funeral, Infernal takes the core elements of their style from them and distills it into a blastbeats loaded piece of aggressive played Black Metal. Like Dark Funeral in their early days or Setherial on Hell Eternal this music offers something for those who are interested in straight and uncompromising piece of Swedish Black Art. In every minute one clearly recognizes that these musicians are capable of what they are doing; listenable through their way of playing the music – speed and technique – but also in the way they have written their songs. Even though not much of variation has been used and the strictly self-limitation to a small facet in the vast Black Metal genre might often be a burden to a band leading to an overwhelmingly self-copying in each songs, Infernal is actually able to bypass this shortcoming and keeping the level in song writing high over the entire album; young bands often fail on this point, because they lack of experience to write songs that catch the listener over a longer period.

Seldom the band leaves the realm the fast played riffs and gives room for a solo or the like. It is indeed surprising that they are used, but they are restricted to a minor role or a neat extra to make the music more interesting and raising it to a core element of it. Matte Modin on the drums really does a great job and uses a lot of breaks and styles so that unlike bands as Setherial the drums are not reduced to some double-bass thing in the background that could also be played by a drum computer, but to a important and dominating part of the entire structure of the songs. The guitars fit well into this category, too, and form the basis of the music with the expected fast played riffs. Surprisingly good are the solos, which appear now and then, especially because they take the enormous speed of the music to an even higher level and contrasting fine the Black Metal thunder which is normally the predominant part of the music. Even though the vocals offer nothing new or any unheard style, they add the music undoubtedly with the right amount of power to give the tracks the last kick. Recorded at the Dugout studio and completed at the famous Abyss studio, the sound of the music is nothing less than excellent and the main reason this album has such power.

Overall the music is really good to listen at, especially if one is fond of aggressive played Black Metal and wants nothing else than a neck breaker piece of music. Even after listening over and over to this album it is not getting boring or the sort, even after all those years that have passed since the record found its way into my collection. Yes, it is somehow very limited and nothing special in particular, but who cares? There are hardly bands out there capable to play such an intense piece of Black Metal. 16:03 minutes are not much … but enough to get some serious neck injuries.