Impaled Nazarene – Vigorous and Liberating Death

I’m not particularly crazy about Impaled Nazarene. They had their apex with Ugra-Karma, which is a brutally brilliant album if you ask me, but all of their subsequent releases, though fairly good, don’t fail to reflect a certain degree of staleness. Yes, they’re extremely competent musicians and performers but, nonetheless, their albums seem to amount to nothing more than different renditions of a same composition. Some praise this as a mark of “trueness”, as if being coherent, per se, were virtuous. I disagree with this position. I prefer an “incoherent” band which succeeds in blowing my mind off with every new release than a very “coherent” act which seems to successively bring forth different versions of a same album.

Besides, I just can’t put up with their homophobic, nationalistic, anti-communist bullshit. Sure, we have our share of bigotry, ignorance or downright idiocy in the black metal scene, but few are so damn explicit about it. Just check the lyrics of tracks such as “Zero Tolerance” or “Healers of the Red Plague” to see what I mean. Let’s just say they could easily be uttered by any minister of the Westboro Baptist Church.

Due to all this, I can’t say I was holding my breath for Impaled Nazarene’s new full-length, Vigorous and Liberating Death, which is just more of the same recipe. A decent sample of brutal, fast-paced, punk-infused black metal. It’s a good release, don’t get me wrong, and at some points it even sounds less “mechanical” than previous albums, which is always a good thing. In one word, this album will maybe make you bang your head, but don’t expect it to rock you off your socks.