I learned a new word today, “effulgence,” as in Pain Effulgence, the new album from Innumerable Forms. All you nerds probably already knew that it’s at odds with the first word in the album title, as I don’t consider pain luminous or radiant. If it works for the band, it works for me, but their style of cavernous, suffocating doom/death is anything but.

Just in case you were wondering what it would be like to stick your head in a wood chipper, check out “Impulse” with its deep, chunky opening riff. Once the track gets going, the main riff is frantic. Until the doom part of this doom/death album comes back. The numerous solos sound plucked from the devil’s guitar when he showed Robert Johnson how to play the blues.

If a wood chipper isn’t your style, maybe “Dissonant Drift” with its traditional, yet brown sound-inducing riff is. It’s one of the longest tracks on the album, so it plods appropriately. That’s still under 5 minutes, though. Around two minutes, an almost skronky, yet technical riff takes over, with furious double bass accompaniment. The atmosphere is assuredly dark and ominous.

At this point, perhaps you’re into a faster pace, like getting hit by a car. Well, that’s too bad, as “Overwhelming Subjugation,” with its less than three minutes of runtime, is another slow, ass dragging attack. Until it isn’t, that is. Another finely-tuned, quick, aggressive riff takes over with around a minute left, until a brief solo at the end.

Just when you think there’s light at the end of the tunnel, perhaps the two most plodding and dark tracks end the album. Of course, the first one is the title track, “Pain Effulgence.” I mostly enjoy the riff at around the two-and-a-half-minute mark. It’s sort of like getting a handjob from Gail the Snail. Sure, she’s mashing it, but are you 100% sure you don’t like it?

The last offering, “Austerity and Attrition,” which is around 7 minutes, basically has the same approach as the rest of the album, which is like a cinder block falling directly onto your big toe. The deep, spelunking vocals do a fine job of narrating the inevitable collapse until there’s near silence around the halfway point. The solo takes the form of a brief reprieve from the bludgeoning, until the pace is finally picked up with about two minutes left.

When this is all over, you look outside, are blinded by the presence of the sun, and yet somehow you long for the gloomy, pitch-black pit in which you used to reside. While Innumerable Forms are only distant relatives of bands such as Insomnium, the sense of despair similarities are difficult to ignore. What I’m saying is that if you like the sunshine of these summer days, that’s fine, but fall is around the corner. If you’re looking for an album to get you prepared for it, you can’t do much better.

[Visit the band's website]

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