Father Befouled – Immaculate Pain (EP)
Release Date: 13th September 2024
Label: Everlasting Spew Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Death-Doom.
FFO: Incantation, Dead Congregation, Cruciamentum, Immolation.
Review By: Eric Wilt
Father Befouled is one of the most consistently good bands in death metal. Playing a brand of death-doom heavily influenced by Incantation, Father Befouled has released numerous EPs, splits, and full lengths, and every one of them is filled with merciless metal gold. On 13 September, the band is back with Immaculate Pain, a five song EP that includes three originals, a Morbid Angel cover, and an Abhorrence (Fin). Cover.
The album gets started with the title song, a ferocious monster of a track that balances adeptly between mid-paced groove and blast-beat laden fury. Impenitent Faith is next and begins with an intro that feels like it could’ve appeared on one of Morbid Angel’s early albums. When the song gets going in earnest, Father Befouled moves back to the mid-paced methodical mayhem that has been their dominant style since the beginning. Abomination of Flesh is the last original on the album, and it leans heavily into the doom side of their sound, with a slowed down pace that makes the song even heavier than the already super-heavy previous two songs. The first cover, Pain Divine by Morbid Angel, sees guitarist/vocalist Justin Stubbs changing up his vocal delivery to fit with the song, which is, admittedly, of a much faster tempo than Father Befouled usually plays. The last song on the EP is a cover of Vulgar Necrolatry by Abhorrence (Fin). As they changed the vocals on the previous song, so the band changes the production quality on this song. Trading the high quality of the modern recording methods, Father Befouled has recorded Vulgar Necrolatry in a way that makes it sound old-school and lo-fi. It’s a unique approach to recording a cover, and I think the changes the band made in both the Morbid Angel and the Abhorrence (Fin) songs give them a novel feel that is more enjoyable than listening to a normal cover.
The one complaint I have with the album is that it’s too brief, although, these five songs will definitely help while we wait for a new Father Befouled full length.
(4 / 5)
