Of Winter Born

Chronique

This somewhat ridiculously named five-piece from England plays brutal, technical death metal with reasonable proficiency if relatively little originality. As with many young bands, it's possible to close your eyes while listening to their "original" songs and picture the members' record collections, and in this case the shelves/iPods would definitely include the collected works of Decapitated, Metallica's ...And Justice for All, everything by the Black Dahlia Murder, and At the Gates' Slaughter of the Soul, just to start. There are odd bits here and there that show even greater promise, like a breakdown toward the end of the title track that's pure Amon Amarth, and there are some nice production tricks scattered about. Which is fine; those are all very good bands to steal from, if you're gonna steal, and these guys, particularly guitarists Steven Brown and Danny Guy (even their names are generic!), are skilled players. But ultimately, to listen to songs like "Tide of Pestilence" and "Elegance in Aggression" is to recognize the limitations of death metal as a genre. It's so rhythmically strict, so bound to a specific set of tunings and chords, not to mention the physically demanding but emotionally limiting vocal style, that finding a way to stand out from the pack is extraordinarily difficult. There's very little chance that a group like Ignominious Incarceration, barring some radical compositional or technical breakthrough, is ever going to break out of the pack and become more than just a decent opening band on a package tour, supporting the veteran acts whose influence is all over this disc.
© Phil Freeman /TiVo