Review of Inlitnment – Spiritual Warfare | Čachtice Records / Noisy Plastics Records
I already knew who was behind Inlitnment before pressing play, so I had a rough picture in my head. Franco Sesa and Erol Uenala don't exactly have a history of writing cheerful records, and Spiritual Warfare isn't about to change that.
The opening minutes didn't grab me by the throat. They just settled in. Big, slow riffs. Plenty of room between them. No hurry to get anywhere. I kept waiting for the band to suddenly kick into another gear, then realised after a while that they weren't interested in doing that at all.
Somewhere around the second track it finally clicked. This record isn't trying to surprise anybody. It just keeps adding weight until you stop expecting anything except the next riff.
Funny thing is, I never really missed the extra flourishes. No flashy lead guitar popping up out of nowhere. No dramatic tempo changes just to shake things up.
Franco Sesa plays the same way. Nothing wasted. He doesn't fill every gap just because there's space to fill. A couple of beats, then he lets the guitars breathe again. It sounds simple when you describe it, but it's exactly the sort of thing that can fall apart if the band doesn't trust the songs.
Headphones changed the record a bit for me. The first time through I mostly came away thinking about the guitar tone. Later on I started noticing the bass sitting underneath everything, holding the whole thing together without asking for attention. That's probably my favourite part of the production. Nothing is fighting to be the loudest thing in the room.
First listen, I kept catching little reminders of those later Celtic Frost records. Second listen... not so much. The comparison just faded into the background and I stopped thinking about who these guys had played with years ago.
A couple of the songs took their time. One of them drifted past me almost completely the first night, then landed properly the next evening for no obvious reason. Doom does that sometimes. You don't always know why something suddenly works. It just does.
By the end I couldn't have pointed to one killer riff and said, "That's the one". What stuck with me was the overall pull of the album. Every time it felt like something dramatic was about to happen, the band simply dug into the groove instead. Oddly enough, that made it heavier.
I never got the feeling Inlitnment were trying to prove anything here. No chasing trends, no forcing surprises, no showing off. Just a handful of musicians who know exactly how they want doom metal to sound and don't see much reason to complicate it beyond that.
I finished the album, left it alone for a while, then caught myself putting it back on later that evening. That usually tells me more than any score ever could.
Thanks to Grand Sounds PR.
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