Inner Fortress - Inner Fortress

Self Released 2011

1.Murdering The Innocent 2.The Pariah 3.Ophidian's Tongue
4.The Fate You've Sealed 5.My Malice

‘Murdering The Innocent’ begins life as a gnarly and very nasty sounding beast, the bass especially horrible having a rumbling and gravelly sound to it which adds a very heavy sound to the guitars. The term ‘cave man’ death metal has been used a lot to describe bands over the years, but it’s probably an apt term to use when describing I.F’s sound. Straight for the throat, simplistic death metal is being offered up here. No frills, no wanking about, it’s all about the metal here! ‘The Pariah’ starts with quite a clichéd guitar intro before the song opens up properly in a pit of natstiness. The whole production sounds dirty here, a very basic finish to the instruments sounds and the vocals are typically hateful, being predominantly screamed, almost Black metal in delivery. The riffing is fairly standard, nothing that really pushed the boundaries of death metal, but then again, they’re really not meant to be. There is some melody under all the nasty production, with some riffing actually starting to sound ‘epic’ with the ending to this second track becoming very catchy and memorable.

‘Ophidians Tongue’ begins where the previous track left off, catchy yet straight to the point riffing. It’s actually the vocals which add a lot to these songs, being very well structured and adding to the overall catchy feel to the track. Deeper growled vocals are introduced and makes for a nice mix of vocal styles and giving the track a more death metal feel. The nasty bass mentioned earlier really punches through the production on this track, again giving it a really dirty feel. However, having heaped praise on the vocals there does seem to be too many of them used on this track, every riff seems to have vocals over it which, for all their excellent delivery, suffocates the song at times. ‘The Fate You’ve Sealed’ is very similar again, vocals seemingly layered over every riff which can become very hard listening as they are mixed really high and are the prominent feature rather than complementing the other instruments. ‘My Malice’ see’s the tempo upped slightly, the song starting off in quite brutal fashion, an almost punk feel beginning to take shape. The track does then return to the mid-paced death metal seen in all of the previous tracks. Nothing really new on offer, this track sounding quite similar to everything that been heard previously.

Summing up, it’s quite standard mid-paced death metal, nothing that is going to ‘push the boundaries’ of extreme metal and nothing that really makes you sit up and take note. Reading the bands biography they claim to be a Death/Thrash/Metalcore band which is a strange combo. Listening to them, yes, there is definitely death metal there, nasty at times but ultimately a quite standard breed of death metal. Not sure where the Thrash of Metalcore comes from, those influences not apparently obvious upon listening to this e.p. This is the band’s first release and it’s a fair first attempt, but more work is needed if the bands predictions are correct:- "Inner Fortress are hotly tipped to make it count in the next few years, this golden shit has only just begun".

6 out of 10