Infamy - The Blood Shall Flow

INFAMY - The Blood Shall Flow (QUABALAH Records CD 1998)

If I can be honest with you, I cannot say many positive things about this album. I don't want to say that it's worthless shit, I’m not gonna go that far. But the problem is that even though it’s fairly listenable piece of old school brutal death metal, it’s so mediocre that it starts to bore me way too fast to really enjoy it. I actually bought this CD without knowing much about the band, but I was tempted by the fact that it's an old US death metal band, formed in 1995. And it had Coffin Texts guitarist Richard Gonzalez in the line-up. "The Blood Shall Flow" was released back in 1998 (I think I bought it around 2009). At that time death metal scene was in pretty bad conditions. There weren’t that many killer death metal records released at that time and this Infamy’s debut also isn’t among them. 

"The Blood Shall Flow" offers low tuned, brutal death metal, in very typical US vein (alike to such Deteriorot, Morpheus Descent, Suffocation, etc), with some small hints of grind (especially in the song "Putrid Infestation", where a lot of old Carcass vibes can be heard). Sadly, the music is pretty standard and hardly impressive, don’t expect your guts to be ripped out. But also the production is not powerful enough to cause a blood massacre. Maybe if the sound was more vicious it would help, but I doubt that. The songwriting is just too mediocre. Infamy had some good ideas, some solid riffs… And both vocalists had a decent deep growl that fitted this sort of death metal pretty well. Technically it’s all fine. But damn, every song seems to sound the same as the previous one and there's just nothing about "The Blood Shall Flow" what would really stand out and make this album exceptional. Blasting brutal death metal, filled with chunky riffs and sick grunts but without a hint of something, what would make you scream "arrrgghhh, what a great effort, what a killer shit that is!!!". They play the safe game, with overused formulas and predictable schemes... and I 'm afraid that also without emotions and bigger creativity.  

I liked when the music slowed down a bit, like in "The Maggots Are in Me", which is definitely the best song on the album, also "Lacerations" has some great stuff. But there's more songs, which pass me by with no harm done. 

Standout tracks: "The Maggots Are in Me", "Bodily Disembowelment"  

Verdict: 65/100