Infamie from Centre-Val de Loire describes themselves on their Bandcamp page as “Old School French Black Death Metal” and that’s a very accurate description. Old school as fuck sounding evil Metal ripping driving on like a chariot leaving a mess of corpses in their wake. Black/Death that’s about 60% Death to 40% Black in ratio of components as far as I can tell – they lean a more on the Death metal side and have a heaviness to them balanced against some gloomier Black Metal influenced riffs.
‘Swallow the Flesh’ has a cool slumping slouching beast kind of thing to it with the way the instruments come together – it sounds monstrous. ‘Ordo Maleficarum’opens with a bang and the drums are going nuts here. It makes me think of a stormy sea tossing a ship around while mysterious and terrible sea creatures gather below. Then it slows the pace and turns into a witch hunt sort of “persecution and torches” vibe before returning to earlier sections. A strong song and one that makes me remember the higher points of their previous work ‘Into the Necrosphere’ such as ‘Satanik Warmachine’. Like that initial EP, this newer release was also mastered by Dan Swano from Edge of Sanity/Bloodbath/Sweden. The audio fidelity is clean, loud and heavy and fuller sounding compared to the first. Not a raw album by any means but a powerful violent burst of speed and energy.
The bass follows the guitar for the most part and fits in well, a humming low end rumble. The drums are tight, lots of blasting and some goat hammer beats too. I liked the snare fills used and the drummer did his thing nicely. The final closer song ‘Cave Bestiam’ shows off some of the drummer’s playing/fill work well. Vocals are effective lower grunts with some higher Black metal “goblin” type style vocals mixed in sometimes too. The guitars sound well balanced not too thin or too chunky just in that sweet spot which for this type of genre blend and works to the strengths of both halves of the Black/Death puzzle. A mixture of Thrash riffs, adept tremolo Black metal nocturnal sounding parts and some heavier chunks which are more influenced by Death metal bands. At just six songs long this EP is worth throwing on and checking out if you like Black/Death that steamrolls corpses like a tank on a battlefield.
