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INVULTATION
Unconquerable Death

Self-released (2021)
Rating: 8/10

Every now and then it’s nice to have your sorry carcass thrown into a furnace and shredded by flames. Here we are then with the second full-length release from Columbus, Ohio cult Invultation, a horrible satanic war metal outfit responsible for 2020’s incredible Wolfstrap debut.

If the likes of Finland’s Archgoat take your fancy then why not skinny dip into the ten tracks on offer here and find your skin ripped from the bones, your eye sockets filled with black molten liquid, your brain reduced to pulp, and your blood sprayed on a sacrificial altar.

You just know this isn’t going to be an easy ride when you read titles such as ‘Necromaniacal Curse’, ‘Cathedral Of Impaled’ and ‘Insatiable Cruelty’, but what I really like about this album is its ability, even through its fiery aggression, to maintain accessibility and, dare I say it, a hellish groove.

Multi-instrumentalist Andrew Lampe is responsible for every blood-soaked clank and clatter on this album, whether in the form of those deep, grinding guitar rushes, those fetid percussive slashes and those watery, gurgling vocal blurts.

‘Hanged Mass’ kicks things off. The eerie suspense makes sure you are bracing yourself, and then the candle flames are blown out with spit as a rusty hammering consumes your body and your room is suffocated by blackness, only dying embers and occasionally fiery flashes in the distance provide any light in what is essentially a pounding, unrelenting heap of blackened death.

The title track keeps the pace; a seething, maniacal expression of hyper drums and gnashing guitar fury. Everything is obscure and above all stuffy as Lampe creates great walls of dripping humidity as the listener envisages dank hellish caverns and blast furnace cacophony.

Unconquerable Death is noisy, stressful and evil, and within the mesh of darkness there may be occasional slower passages such as with the opening chords of ‘Banners Under The Moon’, which has a doomy Slayer-like quality clogged with that usual rustic charm of chaos you’d expect from torrential hails of war metal.

However, ‘Cathedral Of Impaled’ takes away any thought of respite as pistons hammer until springs and coils ping off and you’re left with a sorry mess of billowing and blistering blubber. Here, the vocals are just squalid, squelching burps of mayhem and guttural nastiness.

The grim chug of ‘Breath Of The Lich’ is downright dragging and murky, and even with the apparent pace there’s a boggy, drowning feel. Meanwhile, ‘All Flesh Falls Into Dust’ just trudges with a mocking malevolence like some sorry band of sodden troops condemned to death into the muddy trenches.

Continuing on from the barbaric extremes of last year’s debut release, Unconquerable Death just confirms what I already knew about Invulktation – that being that I’m in the presence of a deep, churning quarry of musical disgust and decrepit brutality.

Neil Arnold

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