Ravage & Conquer 2012

"Singaporean blackened death metallers Impiety continue their onslaught of destruction in the form of their 8th album, aptly titled Ravage & Conquer, on which the band delivers an endless Satanic barrage of blackened death-grind chaos.

True to their style, Impiety based their songs on this album on hyper fast blastbeats, and aggressive riffage, drawing mainly on the aesthetics of death metal and grindcore as well as early Teutonic thrash. While most of the riffage is not super technical, the song structures themselves are actually quite complex, consisting of numerous riffs. Reminding us that they definitely know their way around their instruments, Impiety insert little bursts of technical guitar playing into their tracks every now and then, which definitely adds some texture to the tracks on the album.

The overall impression of the album is one of chaos and evil, and this is obviously something the band deliberately aimed at. One factor in the generation of chaos is the structural quality of the compositions themselves. Coming across as a frenzy of riffs and blastbeats, every tune is extremely intense and, I bet, the result of an underlying control that follows from advanced musicianship. The guitar solos likewise are very chaotic and might seem messy, but they actually include shredding, sweeping and other advanced techniques. The solos also have a certain old school death metal feel to them, which I think that many older fans of the death metal genre will appreciate.

Operating with considerably long song lengths for such an extreme album (the average song length is about five minutes), Impiety allow themselves to cram a lot of impressions into their songs, which does result in some quite interesting elements amidst the blastbeating chaos – just check a track like "War Crowned" with its slightly oriental feel. I generally think that albums with a lot of blastbeating tend to become boring, but drummer Dizazter actually manages to generate variation by using more different types of blastbeating than I ever knew existed.

Production-wise, the album might come across as sounding a bit thin to some listeners who are more used to the lavish and polished productions of modern extreme metal. However, the production of Ravage & Conquer does not detract from the music, and I bet that a lot of listeners will actually like the slightly raw sound.

Fans of death-grind should definitely check this release out. I think that the many blastbeats and the onslaught of riffs in each song might be testing to a lot of listeners, but fans of old school death-grind and brutal black metal are bound to love the chaos and evil that Ravage & Conquer expresses.

(review originally posted at seaoftranquility.org)"