IMMOLATE: Ruminate

Released: August 2010

Recently recruiting ex-Tumbleweed member Dave Achille into their line-up to help bolster their sound, Wollongong quartet Immolate unleash hell in the shape of their latest full-length release, Ruminate.

Even if you knew nothing about this band, you'd expect that with a name like Immolate they were hardly going to be about gentle melodies and delicate symphonics. And you'd be correct. Like some bastardised hybrid of Pentagram and The Jesus Lizard, Ruminate is coarse, repetitive, atonal dissonance where sludge, noise and doom combine in a 42-minute orgy of sonic mayhem. Nick Irwin's unadorned monotone is virtually buried in the mix at times, a mix that is dominated by Achille and Irwin's brother Justin torturing their guitars with a procession of raw, angular, grinding riffs and wildly off-key solos. It's an ugly, primitive sound, oddly compelling but neither for the faint-of-heart nor those with an ear for the more melodic. Indeed, it's almost too much. By two-thirds of the way in, the uncompromising sameness and unrelenting barrage of discordance really starts to feel like you're being repeatedly battered by a heavy, blunt object. Nothing stands out except for how jarring it is.

Ruminate is absolutely not for just anyone, and those who merely dabble in the realms of dissonant doom may find this gloriously ugly album too much to bear. This is definitely one for those who have a real taste for it, and Immolate should certainly satisfy.

1. Heathen

2. Hot Heat
3. Live By (Knife and Gun)
4. Kill Your Idols
5. Trap Me
6. Tune Out
7. Ruminate
8. Broken
9. Integrator
10. Seven Heads
11. Code

Rating: 65%