Album Review: Immortal Bird - Empress/Abscess

Immortal Bird

Empress/Abscess

(Broken Limbs/Manatee Rampage)

This shit makes me feel like I am about to get run over by a 1000 elephants. Just as catastrophe is about to strike, I am dragged down into some Lovecraftian depiction of Nyarlathotep's chaos, and each note sounds like I am going to stabbed by a spear.

This is Immortal Bird.

This album is a culmination of so many good trends that have happened in metal through many decades. Empress/Abscess sounds like Megadeth’s Rust In Peace and Eyehategod’s Take As Needed For Pain were mixed together with eight or nine brilliant death metal albums in a bizarre dark matter ritual that could only happen somewhere you don’t want to be very long. Perhaps that’s why this album only lasts a half hour long. I mean the conclusion is fucking creepy. These musical geniuses leave you off with a really eerie dissonance that belongs somewhere in the I Don’t Think I’m Alone In This Room… category of shock factor. After a relentless melodic groove technical death orgy traumatized my third eye, I only want to think that maybe something is watching me. Thanks Immortal Bird.

Let’s talk about the vocalist, Rae. Now on one hand some readers are going to say it doesn’t matter that she’s a woman, because the music takes precedence, but on the other hand someone is going to say, well you should have mentioned that the singer is a woman and musical genius. Well alright – yes, it’s true, the lead singer is a ferocious she wolf, and an incredibly talented one at that. Rae is also a fucking tempest on the kit, but she’s diverted her focus away from drums to center on her viscous growls and screams on Empress. Immortal Bird are gifted with some captivating lyrics as well, and it only goes to show that death metal is a thinking man’s genre, or a thinking woman’s.

Let’s not overlook the hard work that went into this album either. Layers and layers of cool shit emerge from the murky labyrinth of Empress/Abscess.

I am glad there is no eternity 
I sleep in the hope that shadows will find me
All I want is quiet
A place to wait it out
Until the demise of the earth in volcanic ash
Or blankets of ice

Burn it all down. –  Track 5, “And Send Fire”

Jesus Christ, yes. Yes.