Act of Impalement – Infernal Ordinance
Release Date: 2nd February 2023
Label: Caligari Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Blackened Death Metal, Doom, Crust, Thrash, Sludge, Grindcore.
FFO: Archgoat, Crust, Cerebral Rot, Uthar.
Review By: Rick Farley
Formed in 2012, Nashville’s Act of Impalement is set to unleash their second full length album, Infernal Ordinance, on Caligari Records. Jammed packed with nasty blackened, crusty, death metal. This beastly power trio are looking to filthy up your speakers with some moshable thrashy sludge. The band has steadily sharpened their sound over a handful of demos and EP’s, culminating into their 2018 debut album, Perdition Cult, but also resulted in the band taking a recording hiatus shortly thereafter. The recording process finally began on album number two in February 2020 with the vocals being completed in March 2021.
Infernal Ordinance was recorded and mixed by Yautja’s Shibby Poole, and then mastered by Will Killingsworth at Dead Air studios. It sounds fucking disgusting in all the best ways possible. Dirty, grimy, and completely full of swampy heaviness, it’s still intelligible enough to have clarity between instruments. It’s definitely noisy and screechy, but you can still hear the thud of the kick under the loose distorted riffs. It adds to the chaotic mix of extreme genres the band employs on each track. Album opener Summoning the Final Conflagration is a thrashy black n roll trip straight into Hell right from the get-go. Foot stomping and head banging verses are impossible to deny. The bouncy riffs chug with a rhythmic OSDM vibe that hit as hard as a bulldozer driven by a murdering lunatic about to crash into a doomy wall of noise. Ethan Rock’s vocals are a guttural low growl with a drawl that makes it more brutal. The track switches gears into a chaotic guitar squawk, stomping everything in sight. Bogbody has a Motörhead inspired distorted bass line from Jimmy Grogan teetering the line on crusty, punky, death metal while the intense blasting from drummer Zack Ledbetter at the beginning of Creeping Barrage pummels you to a pulp before settling into a loose groovy beat. The doomy guitars from Ethan Rock are accentuated by Slayer-ish trills and chordal arrangement before settling into another stomping OSDM riff. All of these songs are good examples of what the record sounds like, but also show the lack of coherence amongst the songs. Nothing here is bad by any means, except for a few hopefully purposefully awful solos, but there’s at least half a dozen bands that I could name-drop as getting vibes from. That not always a bad thing, but in this case the production is what ties it all together, not the music. Mind you, the songs are good enough, but the band spends very little time saying much of anything original and at only twenty-nine minutes, Infernal Ordinance is over just as it’s getting interesting. It’s entirely too short to plunk down the hard-earned cash for it.
In the end, Infernal Ordinance is a solid album that is enjoyable enough to spin when the mood strikes, but will sadly get lost in the mix of other releases. Act of Impalement is definitely a talented band with the right chops, and this release will find a dedicated audience. I just hope next time they find more of their own voice and give fans better value for their money. 
(3 / 5)
