Banished From Inferno
Self Titled
7.6
Cadillac Escalades, Thigh Master's, pennies, nickels, whitening toothpaste, light beer, diet soda, fabric softener, aftershave lotion, toe rings, bear bells and The Club: just a smattering of things in our world I find to be nothing short of worthless. Nestling comfortably amongst such frivolities is the idea of further truncating an already short EP such as this with two tracks devoted to a musical intro and outro. And to make matters even more confounding, an additional 4:30 minutes here is spent delivering yet another indispensable cover of "Into the Crypt of Rays" (note to metal bands: at this point I'd rather hear a cover of "One In Their Pride" than anything else from pre '86 Celtic Frost). In other words, 10-minutes out of the full 23-minutes of this EP is tossable.
Despite this, and even despite the fact the track listing on the cd is also botched, I quite enjoy Banished From Inferno's debut EP. It's not just because they sound like a band that could've landed on Earache circa 1990 (back when you could blindly buy from the label with little or no fear - a very distant memory at this point), and it's not only because the band features members of Paganizer and the godly Machetazo either. Nope, I call this EP worthy simply because of the song, "Stench of Evil Through the Mist": a 5-minute jaunt that spends most of its time casually plodding along, but also happens to feature one of the catchiest little repeating guitar licks I've heard in a death metal song in quite some time. This same tune utilizes one of my favorite hooks of this particular style as well: after being lulled into cozy toe-tapping bliss for the first 1:45, everything suddenly stops save for a wonderfully filthy riff in the right speaker that soon gets picked up by the left speaker and eventually kicks the song into full gear with a murkily shouted "BLARGH!!" -- definitely a moment that sparked old memories of enraged Silverback charges into the pit during early Napalm Death shows. Hell, it even mixes up the vocals with some real guttural bellows and raspier shouts ala old-school E.N.T. In short, it's a real ass-kicker of a tune. Perhaps not quite enough to warrant an immediate purchase, but certainly indicative of great things to come once Ibex Moon releases a full-length.
The remaining two songs honestly ain't too shabby either. "Storm Apokalypse" is more straightforward in its clobbering delivery, and "Calaveras" injects more speed and vitriol, but "Stench of Evil..." is really all I need to understand exactly what Banished From Inferno were put on this planet to do: kick us square in the crap-factory with a sweet mixture of Kaamos-styled Swedish death metal and a pinch of old-school grind. Color me very interested in the looming debut LP.
