Christ Inversion
Self Titled
5
Christ Inversion is a Louisiana based black metal band that has featured in its ranks members of Necrophagia, Graveyard Rodeo, Valkyrie, Soilent Green and various other New Orleans area bands, in addition to the core members: Wayne Farba on vocals and Phil Anselmo on guitar. This self-titled release is actually a repackaging of the band’s first demo Obey the Will of Hell from 1994. Christ Inversion is no danger of usurping the position of either Down or Pantera at the top of Phil Anselmo’s musical endeavors, but it is not without a certain crusty charm.
While Christ Inversion does feature a keyboard player, make no mistake, this band is no Dimmu Borgir, the sound is raw and vicious, and the production is suitably “necro”. Christ Inversion’s lyrical subject matter is the typical hateful blasphemy you would expect from a black metal band, particularly one named Christ Inversion. Musically though, the band has a few atypical tricks up their sleeve. There is plenty of the standard hyper-speed tremolo picking and blasting drums to be found, but the band frequently employs meatier riffing that gives the music an old school death metal sound in the vein of Master and Hellhammer. At times, they even slip into a trudging groove that brings to mind death metal heavy weights like Incantation. The death metal feel is compounded by Anselmo’s guitar tone which is darker and thicker than the usual anemic black metal guitar tone, although the production robs it of some of its punch. Wayne Farba’s vocal performance is a bit of a double edged sword in that his caustic mid-ranged bellow imbues the music with an essence of anti-christian hatred of the most venomous sort, but at the same time, his delivery is not very dynamic or musical, and tends to get monotonous after a few songs.
It is somewhat difficult to judge this record, being that the actual recording is about fourteen years old. Christ Inversion uses a lot of samples from satanic themed horror movies as intros, including multiple excerpts from the Exorcist, which is hardly an original idea, but it might not have sounded quite so tired in 1994. Similarly, the band's black/death hybrid probably sounded fairly fresh a decade and a half ago, but the years since then have seen many black metal bands adopt death metal elements and vice versa. In any case, the songwriting has to stand on its own, regardless of context, and in this respect Christ Inversion comes up a little short. The band delivers a fair amount of decent riffs and some convincingly heavy grooves, but nothing is really that memorable. Farba’s ferocious yet one dimensional delivery precludes any kind of vocal hook and the music, while serviceable, is a bit too simple to really make a lasting impression. This is not an awful album by any means, but there are plenty of better black metal albums to spend your money on.
