Let’s dive right into this one — but be forewarned: This “Undertow” will powerfully pull you under and crash you against the rocks.
As the words to this song reveal, the waters here aren’t earthly in origin. Rich in references to ancient mythology, the lyrics shown in the video (and growled monstrously but intelligibly in the song) portray a boat-less journey down the Styx and the harrowing underworld curses it brings.
Like the vocals, the music is also monstrous — monstrously heavy, ruthlessly bone-smashing, irresistibly neck-wrecking, and shrouded in an insidious atmosphere of evil and death.
In this song, with growls and howls galore, the French death metal band Infern bring to bear bunker-busting rhythmic blows and snare-drum mortar fire to create the kind of grooves that galvanize a listener’s muscles, and they also work in riffs that menacingly needle the nerves and also prove to be perniciously infectious.
The music jolts and whines, punches and dismally wails, and the riffing also boils over in bursts of exhilarating but malignant frenzy. The song throbs with a variety of catchy pulses, and at the end it becomes a fast-moving, hard-hammering wrecking machine.
From just this one song, you’ll see why Infern‘s label Dolorem Records recommends their new album for fans of Obituary, Bolt Thrower, Deicide, and Gorefest.
The album that includes “Undertow” is named Turn of the Tide, and it’s the debut full-length of this French band, founded at the end of 2019 by Sylvain Collas (Stonebirds), Julien Tanguy (Gengis, ex-Anthares), and Pierre-Loup Corvez (ex-The Dying Seed). We’re told that “the band was created with the aim of reviving the music contained in an old vinyl discovered during a harpoon fishing trip led by two of its members.”
Those three were soon joined by Jean-Marie Grovel (Gengis) and Simon Beux (Gengis, ex-Taliandörögd) to bring Infern to its final form.
This debut album was entrusted to Charles Elliott at L.A.’s Tastemaker Studio (Abysmal Dawn, Go Ahead And Die…) for mixing and mastering, and it features frightening cover art by Riko.
Dolorem Records will release Turn of the Tide on October 4th in a CD edition with a 12-page booklet including all lyrics, as well as digitally. For pre-orders, check the links below.
Also below you’ll find a stream of the album’s first single, “Phineas Case“. In case you haven’t already been completely smashed to fragments and gutted by “Undertow“, it will finish the job — and it also includes a pair of vividly swirling and supernatural guitar solos that will give your head an electrifying spin while the rest of the band are pounding you deep into the ground. (Like today’s song, this one is also fiendishly catchy.)
PRE-ORDER:
https://www.doloremrecords.com/en/music/605-infern-turn-of-the-tide-cd.html
https://doloremrecords.bandcamp.com/album/turn-of-the-tide-album
INFERN:
https://infern.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/InfernDeathMetal/