As heralded by their single “Rebirth” (which appears on this album as a remixed bonus track) from earlier this year, one of the UK’S leading deathccore/slamming death metal acts, Ingested is a band reborn. Now a three-piece consisting of drummer Lyn Jeffs, guitarist/backing vocalist Sean Hynes and vocalist Jason Evans and aided on this album by session bassist Dominic Grimard of Ion Dissonance and now signed to Metal Blade after a solid three-album stint on Unique Leader.
And you can tell from the album artwork, album title, and song titles like “From Hollow Words”, “All I’ve Lost”, “With Broken Wings”, and “You’ll Never Learn” that have left the likes of “Intercranial Semen Injection” and “Anal Evisceration” fully behind. Ingested has delivered a very personal, mature album dealing with loss, addiction, family issues, shedding negativity, and such. And indeed, the title track deals with the death of Jason Evans’ father during the pandemic and the inability to say goodbye properly. Powerful stuff.
And the album reflects this. As started on 2020s Where Only Gods May Tread, Ingested is developing quite nicely into more than just a burly, all-brawn, broodle deathcore slam band, which they certainly still are at their roots. But simply go to the opening title track to hear female vocals (courtesy of Julia Frau), keyboards, and a brooding sense of sadness befitting the subject matter. And that development features throughout the album, though the band can still rip it up with crushing breakdowns when they see fit. Just listen to the next track “Shadows in Time”.
The rest of the album follows the same trend of just enough experimentation via keyboards and atmospherics (“Tides of Glass”, “Sea of Stone”, “All I’ve Lost”, “With Broken Wings”, and notably super moody closer “Scratch the Vein”- which I initially thought might be a cover song) to keep things interesting and the band’s still heavy AF, if more brooding, full-on slamming brutality (“You’ll Never Learn”, “Shadows in Time”, “Echoes of Hate”) that will keep fans happy and mosh pits heaving. And as with the last album, few guests make an appearance with Trivium’s Matt Heafy ( “All I’ve Lost”) and Aborted’s Sven De Caluwé (“From Hollow Words”). That said, I would have liked to hear Juila Frau more, not just one song.
Ashes Lie Still is a logical development from Where Only Gods May Tread. It carries the same stern, heft, and polish (again from Cryptopsy’s Christian Donaldson mixing/mastering) but there is just enough development and progression to show some impressive growth, and not just by simply adding Latin choirs and keyboards and ripping off Lorna Shore. Nice one lads.
