EP REVIEW: Frigore Inferni – To Obey A Tyrant
Since their formation back in 2015, TO OBEY A TYRANT have made it their goal to twist the deathcore landscape with their blackened onslaught of vile musicality. On their first release since their 2022 debut album Omnimalevolent, new EP Frigore Inferni (Latin for The Cold Of Hell or Freezing Hell) the band are in overdrive to ensure they come back like a meteor.
In the three years, TO OBEY A TYRANT have been silently cooking up a cacophony of demonic presence, there have been more symphonic deathcore bands that have taken the lead in the extreme metal landscape. LORNA SHORE and BRAND OF SACRIFICE among a sea of others are on the front page, but now with their new EP, TO OBEY A TYRANT have truly embraced their symphonic side and have added the depth and punch they’ve needed to their already furious sound.
Opening song I, Apollyon lulls you in with an expansively cinematic orchestral piece before the high pitch vocal shriek of Brandon Singleton pierces your ears as the maestro behind the drum kit, Bruno Clay blast beats his way across the frozen landscape of the album. Apart from around halfway into the song where the riffs of dual string men Josh Rushton and Jamie Stevens come back slower and lower, to the point where you’re getting crushed into the ground by how dense Singleton’s thunderous low growls are.
As the EP unfolds, you’re told a story about a world consumed by torment and misery. Two demonic entities awake from a frozen apocalypse, plunging the world into an unrelenting icy wasteland. With each track exploring the atrocities committed during the endless winter by the hidden dark commanders.
You’d be fooled into thinking Dawnbreaker is a slower song on the record, starting with a more pulled back aggression, until just after a minute where Clay’s double kick assault matches Singleton’s vocals, which were recorded in a toilet bowl as it was being flushed in an empty warehouse to give it that hollow sound that echoes across the frozen hell of the new world, TO OBEY A TYRANT have dragged you into. It also features a haunting guitar tone that savages most, if not all, deathcore albums of the last few years by sending shivers down your spine into your toes and back up again.
On the rest of the EP, which covers just about half an hour, TO OBEY A TYRANT haven’t exactly reinvented the wheel. But they’re adding their own touches to it to inflict more progression and to keep it forever turning. Frigore Inferni as a story, is as gripping as it is breathtaking in the tundra wastes. The only let down on the EP is final song Winter’s Rite. It feels rushed and added as a filler song, adding a sharp cut to the rounded EP. But if you overlook that minor issue, TO OBEY A TYRANT have firmly placed themselves into the running for most ferocious deathcore band since LORNA SHORE‘s comeback.
Rating: 7/10
Frigore Inferni is set for release 21st February via Seek and Strike.
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