Album Review: Iniquitous Savagery – Edifice of Vicissitudes (Willowtip Records)

Brutal death metal quartet, Iniquitous Savagery are back! After nearly a decade since the release of full-length debut album, ‘Subversions of the Psyche’, the Scottish brutes return with sophomore album, ‘Edifice of Vicissitudes’, their first for Willowtip and out on November 22nd, 2024.

They’re back and picking up exactly where they left off. Delivering a beastly and brutalising sound that, once again, puts the death metal world on notice. Not many do it as fast and as heavy as Iniquitous Savagery and across the eight tracks of this new album, any doubts about them lacking the killer instinct are destroyed. This one goes straight for the freaking jugular.

Brutality is the name of the game here, but it’s a sharp technical edge that really gets the blood flowing here. That’s what slices through the soft parts, whereas the pounding and pummelling serves to tenderise. While creative aspects in this kind of music is welcome and Iniquitous Savagery certainly have flashes of it, we’re all here for the same reason in the end and that’s to be beaten bloody.

There is no question that Iniquitous Savagery do anything but that, but there’s also notable darker shades across the album length. This isn’t just fast and heavy, it’s got a wickedness that suggests glee rather than duty. Iniquitous Savagery are enjoying this, not just the ass-whooping they are dishing out but the tension and discomfort they create throughout. This doesn’t make it any less enjoyable, but it does make it feel even more dangerous.

Specifics aren’t needed here because each track delivers the exact same result, it’s just the approach that varies. Some are more guttural than others, some are more frantic than others, some are uglier, and some even have flashes of black and thrash, but the end result is the same. The listener, curled up in a ball, weeping and bloody, but also thankful because the Iniquitous Savagery experience is so rare, you can’t help but enjoy it.

Iniquitous Savagery – Edifice of Vicissitudes Track Listing:

1. Casualty of Diabolical Trial
2. Synaptic Cull
3. Choked Before First Breath
4. Omnipotence Negates Self-Affliction
5. Narcotic Exsanguination
6. Lifeblood
7. Drenched in Righteous Offal
8. Bio-Digital Convergence in the Fourth Industrial Age

Links

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