The Swedish Death metal act Interment originally formed back in 1988. Since then, the band has issues three demos, but stopped releasing material after their third demo in 1994, with one demo tape released under the name Beyond back in 1990. Finally, around 2007, came a split release with Funebrarum, and in 2010 came the release of a compilation album that compiled the band's earlier three demos, as well as a video for the track "Infestering Flesh". Finally, after twenty years of being a band, Interment issue their first full-length album, Into the Crypts of Blasphemy. But, with a sudden burst of activity comes the question of whether or not this full-length is worth it after all this time, and the short answer is yes.
Into the Crypts of Blasphemy may have taken a long while to be recorded, and is a very hard hitting, well done Death Metal album from start to finish. While this release isn't anything too original, it's just a well done romp through the early Death Metal style that many have come to know, love, and nurture through the years. Right off the bat with "Eternal Darkness", you'll be swept up with the nostalgia of earlier Death Metal that just hits you hard with intense, driving guitars and gutteral vocals that just hammers away at you with the well paced drumming that pushes the hard hitting music further, all with a recording quality one would expect from an early ninteties Death Metal recording with ample echo effects to make the gutterals sound more intimidating then they would if left to a polished digital recording you'd find from bands like Arch Enemy or Dimmu Borgir. This is classic Death Metal, and it's simply a breath of fresh air among all the bands that feel the need to blend other styles or see how slow they can get a breakdown going before it's no longer considered one.
Each track on here is fantastic, though none really seem to go too fast outside of the song "Where Death Will Increase" and "Night of the Undead", typically about a mid-tempo pace with moments that do bring it a little faster, such as the drums on "Torn from the Grave", which features the same deep distorted guitars that "Eternal Darkness" greets you with, but also has some well paced two-step drumming going on, mixed nicely with steady cymbol crashes that aren't loud enough to dominate the recording, but at the proper volume level that it really pushes the song forward compare to the rest of the instruments on the release. The band also manages to bring in an audio sample on "Where Death Will Increase" and use it properly. The audio sample is from a horror movie, though not sure which one, of the heroine of the movie shouting simply "Go to the hell". While this works with the actual song and lasts on a brief moment, there still are problems. First of all the audio just cuts in, why a simple quick two second fade in prior to the shouting wasn't used is confusing and would have worked out better so the scream doesn't sound so abrupt and cut off at the start. Another issue is that if you're not paying attention, on your first listen you will think it's some Deathcore vocalist screaming like a pig, or just a pig squeeling in general. While it is effective, it honestly could have just been left off as the song itself is one of the better songs on the album with some great intensity, which only picks up in this song when it all slows down a little more then half way through and just hits the listener harder thanks to the deeper gutteral vocals used that has a layer of slightly higher rhaspier vocals thrown in the background at times during this section of the song for added effect, and the very deep Death Metal distortion on the guitars. However, this luckily is not the only audio sample example, as the song "Sacrificial Torment", another fantastic faster paced Death Metal cut, features some screaming in the background of the music as well, which really helps to set the tone of the song.
It's hard to pinpoint specific songs on this release that really stand out, as they all do in a sense. Much of the album doesn't really violate the sound that is established on "Eternal Darkness", all of which hammer away at the listener with some tracks like "Torn From the Grave" and "Sacrificial Tortment" really changing things up a bit. The riffs and drumming vary greatly through the album, though the music is simply devastating to listen to thanks to the deep distortions presented, and the great paced drums. Outside of the odd audio sample on "Where Death Will Increase", this release really doesn't offer anything bad at all, and is a great homage to the band's roots within the style, and another positive mark for the growing Death Metal revival that seems to be popping up once in a while through new bands grasping what the founders of the style had created. Into the Crypts of Blasphemy winds up being a great, hard hitting album that will have you coming back for more after each spin, and winds up being worth the wait in the long run.
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