Recently I’ve been listening to some Death Metal from some up and coming bands, every one of them trying to do something to make them stand out from the others - Add some Thrash, squeeze in some Melodies, get a Synth Magician to create some Symphonic Death Metal and a whole raft of other efforts and effects to make them that bit ‘Different’. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t and sometimes you just think WTF are they doing. Then you get bands like Incediant who give you no frills, honest to badness, in your face, brutal Death Metal. However, just cos they don’t have any gimmicky fancy bits tacked on to their music doesn’t make them ‘Just Another Death Metal Band’. It may be your no frills, honest to badness Death Metal but Incediant have honed and mastered their skills to perfection, creating an album of squillion notes a minute technical guitar riffs, a mêlée of changing time signatures and tempos and sphincter tightening dissonant solos that are as fierce and precise as a finger poke to the eye. Guitarists Alejandro and Walid play as a tight unit with some good interactions and exchanges in the shape of subtle harmonies and melodies yet not losing any of the ferocity and brutality. Guitar wise, I get flashes of Nile (Minus the Ancient Egyptian themes), Immolation, Deicide and Cannibal Corpse influences enmeshed in the sound; you have to listen quite hard to hear it though. Alejandro also adds the guttural vocals that bellow and roar their way into your inner being.

Keeping a firm grip on the tiller, directing time, speed and direction is the rhythm section of Matt on bass and Clif on drums. Like the guitars, the rhythm section is also a tight unit that interacts / reacts like a well oiled machine. I know that’s a damn corny statement but it’s really the only way you can describe it when you’ve got Bassman Matt hammering the shit out of his guitar to the speed of, and as precise as some of Clif’s patterns! There are a lot of Death Metal drummers, in fact, Metal drummers in general, who put more emphasis on their bass kicking, creating extremely intricate and technical patterns, but to the detriment of their stickwork. Clif manages to delivers great technical patterns in both kicks and sticks. I initially thought that Clif’s kicks sounded a little ragged. However, after some intense listening I am sure the problem is something technical that happens with a triggered drum kit. A band I used to work with had a helluva trouble with this problem.

From the first intro bars of Night Of A Thousand Knives to the dying crash cymbal resonance of Invoking The Flames you have your senses ripped asunder by this enormous slab of Death Metal; the onslaught is relentless. Incendiant is unremitting in its strength of brutality with each track as crushing as the next. I’ve read a couple of reviews of Incendiant where the reviewers have said that there is “Nothing original”; which is on par with those who’ve said that Nile’s album, Ithyphallic, really sounds like Nile?!?! Metaphorically speaking; it may be good to have new and exotic food but you still have a hankering for some of Mom’s home cooking; sometimes you might even have to take a visit to Granma’s to slake your need. The point being Incendiant has created a proper Death Metal album, nothing unnecessary added and, more importantly, nothing taken away; see what I mean by listening to the tracks uploaded at their My Space site.

Incendiant have signed a deal with Jordan River Entertainment which in a way brings me back to what I was on about at the start. Incendiant hail from Salt Lake City (Not exactly a Metal music hotspot) and have probably sent out demos to many record labels in the US who are looking for bands that are ‘That Bit Different’ or ‘Something New And Fresh’; probably looking for the new nu-metal, and we all know where that ended up. Almost certainly never once did it cross their mind that there are bajillions of Metalheads out there who are quite happy to listen to a band that just plays honest to badness, old school Death Metal; and hey, play it well! Luckily Jordan River Entertainment knows a good thing when it comes along and are willing to pander to the whims of all us Metalheads who need our fix of music we know and listen to because it’s what we’ve got attached to over time. Being different doesn’t always mean better!