Ingested: The Kings of Slamchester
There’s few bands in the UK death metal scene with the level of notoriety of Mancunian outfit INGESTED. The self-styled ‘Slam Kings’ made waves in the late 2000s with their debut recordings, immediately putting themselves at the top of the gore-obsessed, hyper-sexual, super brutal slam scene before gradually evolving throughout the 2010s with the well-received The Architect of Extinction and The Level Above Human in 2015 and 2018, respectively. As the 2010s turned to the 2020s, though, INGESTED took on a whole new level of evolution with 2019’s Call of the Void EP – a release that flew under the radar for many, but hinted at a more mature, thoughtful brand of brutalising violence, and paved the way for their strongest offering to date, this year’s Where Only Gods May Tread.
“The thing is, we’ve always seen ourselves as a band that evolves organically. We don’t want to put an album out and then the next album sounds completely different. It’s always been a gradual process, one foot after the next and slowly climbing the ladder.” Reflects vocalist Jason Evens on INGESTED’s musical evolution.
“With The Level Above Human, that’s where we realised we don’t have to keep ourselves in our box. That’s where we started to experiment a bit with songs like Obsolescent and Last Rites – that was the big one that was really different to anything we’d done before. With Call of the Void, we thought ‘Let’s just go nuts with it!’, let’s do what we wanted to do. We wanted to test the waters and just let go. Call of the Void, and in turn Where Only Gods May Tread, is the result of us letting go of all of the ‘You’re a death metal band, you can’t do this,’ or ‘You’re a slam band, you can’t do that.’ You know what, we’re neither of these things. We’re fucking INGESTED. This is who we are, this is what we sound like, and we’re here to stay now.”
One need only look at the track listing for Where Only Gods May Tread to see there’s a level of ambition and evolution that they’ve never had before. Deep into the second half of the album, Another Breath features some stunning clean vocals by guest vocalist Kirk Kirk Windstein – a move that could have screamed “sell out” but actually paid off incredibly. Meanwhile closing opus Leap of the Faithless is a nine-minute behemoth, the longest and most expansive track in INGESTED’s catalogue to date. And a promising sign of what’s to come from the band.
“Leap of the Faithless is my favourite song from the whole album. It was supposed to be an instrumental but when Sean [Hynes, guitars] played it for me I thought it was one of the best songs he’d ever written. As soon as he played it for me I listened to it for four hours straight in my bunk while on tour in Europe and wrote the lyrics in one stint, pretty much.” Evens exclaims, the passion he feels about arguably INGESTED’s best songs to date palpable down the phone line.
“I’ve been pushing hard to play it live since I finished the lyrics, but everyone keeps reminding me it’s nine minutes long – but it’s so good though! Bohemian Rhapsody is about eight minutes long, Master of Puppets is eight minutes long… Fucking Unas Slayer of the Gods by NILE is 12 minutes long! It’s definitely doable!”
It’s not just musically INGESTED have undergone a severe metamorphosis over the last few years, though. Slam and brutal death metal are genres that are lyrically pretty unpleasant, whichever way you slice it. Over the top gore to a level that would make even CARCASS take note, coupled with deeply misogynistic at best, and sexually degenerate at worst, lyrics have been a sticking point in the genre for years. And while INGESTED had their share of nasties in their initial recordings, Evens is keen to show he has greatly matured as a lyricist in recent years.
“With our first album, the lyrics were very extreme, very violent and very sexual. But when we wrote that album we were about 18, listening to CANNIBAL CORPSE and DYING FETUS, reading their lyrics and thinking ‘I can do worse than that!’ That’s basically where Surpassing the Boundaries of Human Suffering came from. But once you’ve done that, you’ve done it, you know? And as we grew up we matured as people, as songwriters.” Evens explains on the lyrical changes the band have undergone since their debut.
“With a lot of our newer stuff, especially from The Level Above Human onwards, are very personal. We write them in a very personal way, then change them to be more metaphorical so you can apply the lyrics to whatever you want to apply it to. If you read the lyrics and connect with them in some way, then as far as I’m concerned that’s what it means. But with the new album, a lot of them are still pretty personal but look at the world right now – it’s fucked. So a lot of Where Only Gods May Tread is about the state of the world we live in, the folly of human nature. Human mentality is frightening, and it’s sad.”
All this evolution for INGESTED sees the band rise far above the slam underground, and gives a sense of legitimacy to the band as a juggernaut of the death metal scene, not just the Kings of Slam. And what does every death metal band intent on achieving legendary status need to have in their catalogue? A Dan Seagrave album cover.
“We’ve always wanted a Dan Seagrave piece, all the album covers he’s done are legendary. For us to finally be able to work with him, I can’t tell you how happy we were!” Evens explains, his excitement about working with Seagrave still as high as ever. “An interesting thing, Lyn [Jeffs, drums] was in contact with Dan about the artwork and getting the updates. Originally, he wanted the art to be quite dark, but Lyn pushed him to go for white and lighter colours, just because he’s never done anything like that before. He said afterwards that it was really weird for him to use that colour scheme – so we managed to get a legendary death metal artists to move out of his comfort zone for us, and it ended up working out fucking brilliantly!”
In spite of INGESTED transitioning from a top quality band in the slam scene to a modern legendary death metal band in their own right, though, Evens is keen to make sure they never forget where they came from. “We’ll never forget our roots, we’re all working class lads that came from nothing and everything we have we worked for and we earned. We’ll never forget the scene we came from – we put out an album 11 years ago that changed slam, that’s why we’re the Slam Kings.”
There’s no question that INGESTED are the undisputed kings of slam. But what’s really exciting is what’s next for the Mancunians – if Call of the Void, and to a greater extent Where Only Gods May Tread are signs of what’s to come from the band the 2020s will undoubtedly see them reach the legendary status they deserve – though they wouldn’t be the first Manchester band to reach the top of their game. “There’s something in the water in Manchester, and its not just used johnnys! Manchester has always been a hotbed of good music, OASIS, STONE ROSES, JOY DIVISION… and now INGESTED – stick us up there with the Gallaghers! Slamchester, baby!”
Where Only Gods May Tread is out now via Unique Leader Records.
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