Rating: 5.7

Country: Chile

Genre: Death Metal

Record Label: Old Temple

Release Date: 2007

Track list:
1. Creating the Infernal Pacts (Intro)
2. Nigromantic Arts
3. The Suffocating Heat
4. Death Aroma
5. Carriers of the Death
6. Melancholy (Instrumental)
7. Descent
8. Destroying The Light
9. Die Under the Power of Devils/Master of Darkness

Band Website: Inferis

Inferis - In the Path of Malignant Spirits

Cesar Pezoa - Drums
Gonzalo Riveros - Lead & rhythm guitars
Hernan Villagrán - Bass & backing vocals
Rodrigo Manzor - Lead vocals

Several features pointed towards the pure death metal nature of this release such as Inferis' Chilean origin, their spiky horned logo and the hand-drawn lo-fi ‘evil' artwork – a dead giveaway. It is quite an intriguing one actually, depicting a skinless demon in the middle of the artwork whose ribs resemble claws with pointed nails holding tiny babies in its grip. On the left side is a picture of dog-like creature with a similar ‘Tandoori chicken' complexion captured in midair, its body language suggesting that it's just got a fatal kick on its red ass, whereas on the right is another similarly proportioned creature, a much more unfortunate one as it's stripped of all flesh, looking like a fossil of a dog that was dancing on its hind legs when the sudden brutal earth-slamming took place. I noticed a few more interesting details but by then I had obtained enough proof for an assured heart-warming pure death metal session.

Heart-fluttering is more like it, for following a squeaky albeit pleasurably eerie violin intro, you are led straight into a tornado of fiery South American aggression and befuddlement typical of the Brazilian and Colombian death metal bands. In fact, there exists a good deal of similarity between Inferis and the Colombian band Yog Sothoth [review], and unfortunately Inferis also share the latter band's drawbacks, more specifically their muddled compositions which is made all the more glaring without the misty cover of darkness sheltering Yog Sothoth's music. Furthermore, with raw power and undesirable clarity vested in each of the instruments, the cohesiveness of the music is adversely affected and it sounds as though they are running off in different directions at the same time. Not necessarily a consequence of the production (which is sick to an extent – the jangling sound of the bass is exceptional), the songs go nowhere at all and it doesn't help that quite a few of them blast on for as long as seven minutes. Even though they play some fine death metal riffs mostly of the Brazilian kind and provide with the occasional lead and acoustic breaks, Inferis fail to capitalise on them and settle for inconsequential song progressions and mindless barbarity; it soon becomes evident that Inferis lack the finesse to play songs of such prodigious lengths.

The promise of a riff-based pure death metal entertainment thus turns into an exercise of stretching the limits of your patience or a humbling lesson of how to be content with an insufficient amount of good parts in a punishing near 50 minute album. It is nothing but frustrating to see the band's undeniable potential and ability harnessed so poorly – "Destroying the Light" and the couple of bonus rerecorded tracks borrowed from their demo tacked at the end as one for example I found to be of acceptable quality – the kind of frustration that would arise after expecting a beautiful but incorrigibly slutty friend to mend her ways so that you can take her out more often. In other words, this release will fail to engage the attention of an experienced death metal listener as a result of which you would not like to take In the Path of Malignant Spirits out from a CD rack that holds many other titles of South American origin.

September 5th, 2008