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Mining Metal is a monthly column from Heavy Consequence contributing writers Langdon Hickman and Colin Dempsey. The focus is on noteworthy new music emerging from the non-mainstream metal scene, highlighting releases from small and independent labels — or even releases from unsigned acts.
It was in conversation with Grandmaster Otheyn Vermithrax Poisontongue of Stormkeep, Blood Incantation, and Wayfarer, I realized how impressive Immolation’s Descent is. He and I spoke about the five-year gap between Stormkeep’s debut album Tales of Othertime and their upcoming sophomore record, The Nocturnes of Iswylm, which isn’t much longer than the four years Immolation took between releasing Acts of God in 2022 and Descent this April. For him, a second Stormkeep album could’ve been just that, a second Stormkeep album; a reshuffling and glossing up of the hits, but ultimately a retread. Somehow, Tales of Othertime felt effortless in its decadence. The Nocturnes of Iswylm sweats to differentiate itself from its predecessor without veering outside of Stormkeep’s distinct identity on such a molecular level that it could not have been completed in two or three years. Five years sounds about right. I don’t want to spoil the album too much before its release, so this will have to do–the leap from wizards to vampires is deeper than the skin.
It was along those lines that we discussed how, even if Stormkeep tried to make Tales of Othertime II: The Quickening, they could not replicate it because they are not the same Stormkeep. Tales of Othertime framed a specific moment in the band’s life, as all art frames a fraction of an artist’s existence and asserts it as everlasting. The years between writing and recording altered Stormkeep’s members as time and experience alters us all. Nobody is who they once were, and one piece of art cannot encapsulate the entirety of an artist when it can’t capture them for longer than a single frame in a film reel.
That being said, Immolation have despised God on record for so long that their blasphemy has gone from evocative to edgy to blaisse to evocative again. While their subject focus has altered slightly (Kingdom of Conspirary honed in on socio-political aspects that are a confession wall’s width away from religious criticism), they’ve repurposed the same sentiments a dozen times, revealing near nothing about themselves through their music. That’s hardly rare in death metal, a genre that’s as impersonal as it is adherent to conventions, so Immolation uphold the rule. Their longevity could be attributed to the rising presence of Christian cringe culture again, which was largely dormant in the 2010s so reacting adversarily to Jesus felt antiquated, whereas now it’s like when JNCO jeans made their comeback, but I’d moreso argue that it’s because Immolation do the opposite of Stormkeep; they try to stay in the frame they defined for themselves.
Immolation reviews, and of their new album Descent, almost feel like a waste of energy and paper because shit hasn’t changed. They still sound exactly how they should, and you don’t need to be reminded of that. But, miraculously, they still sound as good as you remembered them sounding, as if they dipped their instruments and fingers in the Lazarus pit of novelty and are incapable of sounding stale. The minor quibbles one could have about Descent amount to loving nitpicks. The group have been largely the same for decades, albeit with a some roster changes, but nothing is truly inert. Immolation didn’t budge, so the world moved around them, putting their long-tenured convictions into new light.
In much the same way that Stormkeep could not repeat Tales of Othertime, the world could not be as it was when Closer to a World Below released. It’s one thing to be consistently good for that long. Many aging metal bands still release quality music. But to stay relevant and biting for this long speaks to an enduring quality of the art itself. Immolation have dug themselves into an evergreen gold mine.
– Colin Dempsey
English (US) · 