Like the latest from Beneath the Massacre, the debut from Infernaeon, A Symphony of Suffering (also on Prosthetic Records no less), is barely 30 minutes of music, hardly more than an EP's worth of tunes, but packs one hell of a wallop. Labeled as "blackened death metal from Florida", this six-piece have really hit a home run on their debut, as they have enlisted the services of Erik Rutan (Hate Eternal/Morbid Angel) on the mastering chair for a great sounding and brutal thirty minutes of mayhem. Sounding somewhat like a cross between Nile, Edge of Sanity, Morbid Angel, Cradle of Filth, and Dimmu Borgir, Infernaeon play a somewhat technical and melodic brand of old school death metal, with lots of black metal elements sprinkled in, like symphonic keyboards, blast beats, and varied vocal styles. The results are at times quite staggering, especially on a song like "Sleeping God", a furious blend of progressive death metal and symphonic black metal, complete with wild guitar solo spots, brutal drum work, oodles of keyboards, tortured growls and high pitched shrieks. "Oracle of Armageddon" rages along like the second coming of Immortal or Emperor (imagine that from a band from Florida!), while "Embodiment of Sin" gives Nile and Decapitated a run for their money on the technical side of brutal death metal.
The worlds of death and black metal once again collide on the killer "March of Death", with the guitars of Sam Molina & Brian Magley really hitting the crunch factor easily at 10 on the richter scale, while drummer Nick Agusto works overtime pummeling away at his kit. The closing "AIDS" is an intense amalgan of extreme metal sounds, with constantly shifting technical guitar work hammering the mix, tempered just a tad by Zack Brown's keyboards, but driven home at full force by the vile growls of Brian Werner.
At the end of the half hour run-time, you'll want to take a deep breath, let it all out, and hit the replay button to make sure you didn't miss anything the first time around. From that point on, expect endless satisfaction from this bombastic and brutally heavy affair. Infernaeon have managed to pull together a few different flavors of extreme metal and make it all work, and the resulting A Symphony of Suffering is a phenomenal work by a band that we can hopefully expect even greater things from in the years to come.
Track Listing
1. Shades of Obscurity
2. Embodiment of Sin
3. Sleeping God *
4. Oracle of Armageddon
5. March of Death
6. AIDS (Annihilating The Inner Decay of Species)
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