I’ve been keeping tabs on this Minnesota act since the demise of With Dead Hands Rising, one of the oos early and better deathcore/metalcore acts, as they feature some former WDHR members. And finally they have released a follow up to 2014s self released debut,  Poison of the Earth, and it’s quite the follow up.

Plying the sort of shreddy, melodic deathcore that saturated the early and mid 00s like their former band, as well as Conducting From the Grave, Woe of Tyrants, The Eyes of a Traitor, Fate, Within the Ruins, the first Sons of Aurelius album, Ever Forthright and such, but adding a little more beef, Reaping Asmodeia has the potential to be the heir apparent to All Shall Perish. Heck, they even got Zach Ohren to produce the album (as with the debut), so they even sound similar…

I got a really heavy The Price of Existence vibe from Impuritize, and in a good way. Also some Embrace The End‘s Counting hallways to the Left. This is busy, shred filled metalcore/deathcore with a impeccable skill level, some scathing blasts,s some impressive breakdowns and djent grooves and really nice sweeps/lead work that Chris Storey  and Ben Orum would be proud of.

Look no further than second track and one of my favorites “Defenestration” for a sampling of the goods on display, with some really gorgeous shredding to start the track. But its not all self indulgent noodling as “‘Of Talons and Teeth” follows with some nice keyboards and even a subtle little Southern/He Is Legend/ Maylene and the Sons of Disaster groove buried in the mix of burly breakdowns and shreddage. “Collage of Toxins” even slows things down a bit even, with a slower lurch, showing the band can reign it in, just not very often.

Sometimes, they do get a little too busy for their own good, as heard on “Hidebound”, which gets a little ahead of itself at times, being a little too shreddy, but does settle into a solid breakdown and gallop eventually. Still,  the main allure is some nifty arpeggio work, and when it finds that perfect melodic/noodly balance- it simply rocks, as heard on the duo of, “Carnal Declivity” and “Irreversible Evolution”, another two standouts.

In this genre and in 2017, it’s rare that former members of a band live up to or supersede the prior band’s hype (ironically, Antagony/All Shall Perish is the only one I could immediately think of), but Impuritize blows anything WDHR did out of the water while being both nostalgic (if 2005-2008 is being nostalgic…) and modern.

[Visit the band's website]

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