Infernal Revulsion - Dead But Breathing (Revenge Productions; 2009)

With Dead But Breathing Infernal Revulsion have finally released a follow up to their excellent debut album Devastate Under Hallucination which came out in 2007. Devastate Under Hallucination is a personal favorite of mine and I think because of that Dead But Breathing feels a little disappointing.

To be fair Dead But Breathing has a lot of really good moments. Infernal Revulsion's strength is writing really heavy slams. Their slams aren't catchy as much as memorably heavy. The musicianship on this album is very strong and every instrument is played very well. They even throw in a couple cool solos. The album as a whole feels very menacing and mean (in a good way). The production is very full and thick sounding which helps add weight to the build up and execution of the mammoth slams that Infernal Revulsion employ.

What disappointed me though is that Infernal Revulsion pretty much wrote the same album as their debut, they just didn't do it as well. Both are eight songs long, both have an instrumental intro and basically the songwriting is the same. It's hard to put my finger on exactly what is wrong, but it's just not as good. If Dead But Breathing had been their first album and Devastate Under Hallucination had been their second, I would've praised them for having a decent debut and an awesome second album that improved nicely on the formula from the first album. Unfortunately it is the other way around.

Although this isn't a bad album by any stretch of the imagination, you can get the same but better from their debut.