If you had managed to catch Act of Impalement‘s 2018 debut album Perdition Cult, you’d know that this Nashville trio could have gone in many different directions with a follow-up full-length. They pulled from a lot of different heavy and extreme genres and succeeded in keeping listeners perpetually off-balnace. As one especially vivid review put it, they proved themselves capable of “churn[ing] out vile heaps of grinding crust one minute and the next cough[ing] up a doomy, death metal cyst of drudgery,” creating an experience where “sodden waves of sludging doom marry up with guttural death metal nuances before a sudden tide of black-cum-death thrashing interrupts”.

There were so many highlights on that first album, so many hideous thrills and chills, that it wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world for this hydra-headed world-ender of a band to just do it again, giving fans another discombobulating tour through a hideous netherworld labyrinth of sound. But the second album that is now about to emerge after a five-year hiatus gives us a different plan, no less thrilling and chilling but more focused in its monstrosity. And oh hell yes, that second album Infernal Ordinance is a monster. Continue reading »