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.
