Album Review: Entomophthora - Instinctual Disease
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
I’ll tell you right away what’s wrong with this album; it’s sat there right in the middle, and it’s called “Mass Hypnosis”. A tremendous cover of the Sepultura classic that razes your dwelling to the foundations, it does spectacular justice to an iconic track from “Beneath the Remains”, which is widely – and correctly I might add – regarded as one of the finest releases in the storied canon of thrash metal. It’s monumental, but the unfortunate snag is that it absolutely dusts every scintilla of Entomophthora’s original material.
It’s not as though the original material is bad for the most part, because it isn’t. Generally it’s fine. Alright, even. At it’s better moments, such as the pyrolatrous black metal of “The Flames of Chaos”, or the gutsy grimace of “Tormented and Torn” and it’s low-hanging groove, it can even be compelling. But when “Mass Hypnosis” exists right there as a comparator? It can’t help but seem anaemic. Covers have a place in metal, and have done for some time – just to reference the evergreen masterworks of elder statesmen like Judas Priest, “Diamonds and Rust” or “The Green Manilishi” are excellent entries in their discography; but the thing is, both those covers exist in albums where the surrounding material is also of superlative quality – “Diamonds and Rust” for example is on the Sin After Sin album, and shares space with breathtaking tracks like “Dissident aggressor”, “Starbreaker” and “Sinner”. But this isn’t the case with Entomophthora – they’re a talented bunch for sure, but they’re not on the level of apex Sepultura.
And that’s quite aside from the more ugly demerit of the broader issues that this release has. It’s a brief spell of time that you spend with it for one thing, capping out at only 32 minutes and 22 seconds. Not a problem in and of itself, but when that time includes a cover version of 4.23 minutes, an interlude of sorts called “A Primordial Might”, which feels as though the band came up with 2 neat riffs and couldn’t figure out where to go from there, and “Aftermath”, an overlong 4.27 minute long outro track which is substantially a spoken word broadcast about the world facing armageddon, then the remaining material comes to 22 minutes and 12 seconds. Even if that material is mostly decent, it’s comparatively meagre. Removing the offending original tracks and the Sepultura cover (that makes everything else seem lacklustre by comparison) would perhaps improve the release as a whole but it would also mean pruning it down to essentially EP length.
It’s conflicting to an extent. The title track features some squawking immolation harmonics that I enjoy, and sprinkled throughout the album are some interesting layers added onto riffs, especially on chorus sections, that add a fun twist to the material and keep it consistently engaging. The production is crunchy and the vocal performance in particular is versatile. They consistently switch tactics to avoid any monotony creeping into events, but I feel like I’m reaching for upsides for the sake of being kind. The blunt fact is that if I return to this album it’s going to be almost solely for a cover version, in which case the question must be asked – why would I not just listen to Sepultura? Outside of this, I’m hammering the skip button for the sake of an EP worth of reasonable, but hardly sterling material.
I hope Entomophthora stick around, because I think they’ve a place in the pantheon of modern death metal. But this album sadly isn’t doing a whole lot for me, and repeat spins have only made it’s shortcomings more apparent. Take “Vortex of Violence”; it comes equipped with bristling teeth of sundering melodeath riffs and blastbeats that forces approving gurns from me, then at 1.43 we’re dropping into simplistic, repetitive alternate picking for an extended sessions. The fury abates, and with it, much of my interest. The song does rescue itself, but it bodes ill that even amongst that precious 22 minutes of worthwhile original material comes sections that give me pause. I can’t wholly disregard Entomophthora as a force within modern death metal, but I would like to see subsequent releases amp up the fury and pare back some of the less inspired sections, and hopefully next time I’ll be able to countenance a more glowing review.
