There are not many acts in extreme music that can toe the same sort of line that Ingested have in their career. Since their inception, the band have been at the forefront of the extreme music scene, particular in the UK, and have never waivered in their mission to create the most brutal and unyielding music that they can.
Roll back ten years and we see a band that had gotten its foot in the proverbial door with its scathing debut album, Surpassing the Boundaries of Human Suffering, when the underground scene was starting to pay real attention. With that in mind, Ingested took a tremendous step forward and unleashed their sophomore album The Surreption. This effort would push them to the very front of the death metal pack and would give them the foundation they needed to cement themselves as mainstays for the foreseeable future. Now, ten years on, Ingested have chosen to revisit their classic and give it the attention and recrafting that it deserves, with all the tools and tricks that have become available in their time since its original release.
From the very outset the difference is clear. The main skeletons of the songs are the same, but everything feels clearer and more polished whilst still maintaining the same visceral aggression. The original recordings were by no means poor, but with modern technology the technicality really comes to the forefront and shows just how talented the musicians truly are. The drums sound as though they are going to kick their way through your speakers and cut through the mix perfectly, ensuring that every snare hit can be distinguished, with the blast beats on Crowning the Abomination sounding like heavy artillery as they should.
One thing that comes to mind when listening to this album is just how impressive the songwriting was, even at this primitive stage of the band’s career. Sure, this time out they have made tweaks and extra flourishes here and there, but with tracks as engaging and devastatingly heavy as Decline showing up so early, and the benefit of hindsight, it really should have come as no surprise just how important to our scene these Mancunians would become. The barbarity in this song is something that most bands could only hope to capture on their finest day and Ingested managed to pull it off in their relative infancy, including a breakdown towards the end of the song that is almost laughably heavy.
Castigating and Rebirth is one of the highlights of the release, with the slamming riffs standing up to anything being regurgitated by bands that Ingested have influenced since this album first dropped. The drums have the same surgical precision that one would usually find on a Fear Factory album, with the mechanical feel of the riffs adding to the technical ecstasy that the band have made one of the staples of their sonic battery over the years.
So, the big question to be asked here is what does this redux version of the album offer? Is it necessary to rehash old ideas and repackage them? And the simple answer is a resounding “yes”. This re-release takes songs that were already highly regarded and expertly put together and gives them a new lease of life, giving them the tender love and care that they deserve and, on top of that the clarity, to see through the dated production of the original and give the different key elements of them time to shine. More importantly than that though, is to bring this important release to the forefront of people’s minds and to show off one of the gems of the genre’s rich history to a whole new audience.
8/10
Standout Tracks: Decline, Castigation and Rebirth, Kingmaker
For Fans Of: Aborted, Pathology, Vulvodynia
Written by: Richard Webb
