Ingested. Well, that band name should tell you everything you need to know, really. Not enough? I’ll humor you. Remember way back when, before Cannibal Corpse got “soft” and stopped titling songs in the vein of “Fucked With a Knife?” Ingested hope to rekindle the olden days of gory death metal, and they’re doing it in more ways than just one.

Look at the track listing. Go ahead. I’ll wait. So yeah, they’ve got the sickening song titles and the overtly-misogynistic, extremely graphic lyrics (The softest line I’ve heard: “She won’t survive this; I’ll leave her here to rot”). But they’ve also got something else, something you can’t tell just by reading liner notes and song titles. They’ve got style. It isn’t unique, per-se, but it’s different. Ingested’s “it” factor is hands-down their innate ability to take the many different, modern iterations of death metal and combine them for a mashed-up, “best of” aural showcase. Imagine, if you will, a band that takes the following styles and combines them: Cannibal Corpse, Waking the Cadaver, Beneath the Massacre, Whitechapel, Six Feet Under, Bloodbath, Vehemence, and Deicide. That’s a pretty huge list.

One could argue, considering the abundance of breakdowns and lyrical themes, that Ingested could be fit within the “deathcore” mold. I’d like to agree with that sentiment, especially considering the (questionable) lack of solos on this record, but Ingested is squarely death metal. Every time I hear a song from this album, I think back to early Cannibal Corpse. It’s an unmistakable link that I can’t deny. Chromatic runs, pounding palm mutes, and lyrics dripping with festering gore. Ah, the glory days.

The album’s production, considering it’s the band’s first release, is good. The guitar tone is slightly muddy, but with the genre at hand, that’s forgivable; the guitars never need much as there is an inherent lack of soloing. On one hand, they aren’t adopting the old-school death Slayer-like annoyingly random solos but on the other hand, you don’t get to hear guitar wizardry like you do from the more technical modern death bands like Necrophagist, Beneath the Massacre, and All Shall Perish. Drumming is tight and punchy, but suffers from that Beneath the Massacre “this is digitally assisted” feel. The bass drum sounds way too tight. Vocally, Ingested hovers between throaty inhaled pig grunts (think Waking the Cadaver) and the barked gutturals of most other death bands. Thrown in the vocal mix are hardcore-ish tougher-than-tough-guy threats. The bass work adequately follows the guitar work, as is needed with such a demanding chromatic-based style.

This album is not Ingested’s masterpiece. As good as it is and they are, they can still get better. If they can continue to mix the modern and classic styles of death while improving technically and structurally, Ingested is destined to release some absolutely classic albums in the future.

4.0/5