Immolation - Unholy Cult

Immolation actually got better. Unholy Cult is kilometers above Here in After in terms of both in terms of ideas and execution. And since I made a pun on the Here in After review using a track title, I feel obliged to do so again. In Immolation's discography, Unholy Cult is the 'Wolf Among the Flock'. The riffs are not only better than on any other Immolation album - I know, that's not saying much - but they are also assembled skillfully in a cohesive package. Immolation is to be credited for their, for once, superior songwriting. Gone in much of the carnival randomness and jingle-like, incoherent riff structures that defined this band since its inception.

Unholy Cult stands alone in Immolation's discography: all albums that came before were random bullshift, and all albums that come after are random nu-metal bullshift. Featuring a more ambitious proposal than anything they've previously offered, including the use of more technical death metal technique, what's most surprising is that such an otherwise mediocre band actually manages to pull everything off rather convincingly. As a quick side-note, when I say technical death metal, I mean actual technical death metal, as in Vermin, Suffocation and Demilich, not random 'tek-def', as in Necrophagist, Cynic and Cryptopsy.

They will never match their eternal superiors Incantation, they don't even come close to matching their recent, more mediocre material - to say nothing of Onward to Golgotha - but as far as Immolation goes, Unholy Cult is both their zenith and the end of the band's relevance, as after this album they devolved even further into modern nu-metal buffoonery.

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