Chaos Inception – The Abrogation

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Originating from Alabama, Chaos Inception put out one hell of a promising debut album with 2009’s Collision With Oblivion. Their new album The Abrogation seeks to keep the momentum going; so do they? Well….no, not really. It’s by no means a horrible album, just one that repeatedly stumbles towards the finish line.

First off, let’s start with the good. For metalheads that are fans of bone-crushing brutality traveling at 100mph coming to fuck up your day – well, you”ll probably be pretty happy with the type of death metal Chaos Inception plays. It’s fairly fast and technical; akin to the type of death metal played by Nile or Behemoth if you’re familiar with those bands. Songs like “Lunatic Necromancy” show off the amount of technicality that Chaos Inception brings to the game – it’s a nice mix; not too much to overly distract you but just enough to make you take notice and appreciate it. There were maybe one or two times where I caught myself wishing the amount of technicality was toned down a tad, which is great since lot’s of bands find themselves fooling around a little too much with that element of their music at times. I think the fact that Chaos Inception is fast-paced helps keep the amount of pretentious guitar and drum work down to a minimum, which is nice – it’s self regulating.

As far as guitars go, songs like “Hammer Of Infidel” really show off how talented Matt Barnes is on the axe. Ferociously fast riffs and catchy as hell solos routinely pummel your eardrums song after song, and for the most part you probably won’t mind it one bit. The guitar parts really are one of the highlights of The Abrogation; most of them are finely crafted and perfectly accent the music around it. The drums are also pretty damn good; with Gary White coming up with some creative fills on the kit while participating in some catchy-as-hell call and response with the guitars. Ok, so we now know that Chaos Inception can create some good songs and play their instruments proficiently; but how’s the actual album itself?

Well, I’m not going to lie…it’s a bit on the bland side. After you get passed just how brutal Chaos Inception sounds on this album, you’ll start to notice some things that just seem a bit off. The guitars and drums are great, but the vocals are somewhat disappointing. Now listen, I know death metal (especially this particular type) doesn’t exactly have the largest variation in terms of vocals; but seriously this dude just sounds straight up bored on this album. To the point where it starts dragging everything else down a bit in some sort of depressing way; it’s really a shame. This starts to creep into other areas of the album as well; even though The Abrogation is just under a half hour long there are points where it starts to feel like it’s dragging on a bit. It never lasts too long, but it’s definitely there. The production is also somewhat disappointing; at certain points it just sounds too muddy, making for a rather unpleasant listening experience at times. It’s actually more frustrating because it’s fairly inconsistent throughout the album; one minute things will sound fine and the next minute it’ll sound like you’re listening to a blender located in the apartment above you.

If Chaos Inception can keep improving like they did between Collision With Oblivion and The Abrogation they’ll eventually be putting out some kick-ass albums. As it stands now The Abrogation is a somewhat fun listen with some serious flaws.

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Anthony
Anthony
Long Island, New York based metal enthusiast.
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