Band:	Ordinance
Album:	Internal Monologues
Style:	Progressive death metal, Technical death metal
Release date:	July 2011

01. Seldom Thought
02. Opposition
03. Repress
04. Desensitizing Process
05. V
06. Internal Monologues
07. How The Biased Live
08. Singular Perspective
09. Struggling With The Inevitable
10. Circular Logic
11. This Theory; Repeating
12. Fear Of Discovery [demo] [bonus]

When progressive death metal is brought up for discussion, two notable names immediately spring to mind, Cynic and Opeth. The former hurled an unprecedented outburst of jazzy drones and complex arrangements of high quality technical death metal upon the globe's dark corners while the latter heisted the minds of thousands of metal addicts with gripping blasts of excruciating progressive-drizzled ripples leaping over scintillating grazes of soul-crushing death. Am I being irrational or perhaps delusional? Am I actually trying to find a connection between these two beasts and Ordinance? Well, hell yeah!

Ordinance, with their debut Internal Monologues, have sired a record bridging Opeth's Deliverance's cut-throat guitars and intense drum work to Cynic's Focus's intricate technical approach with shades of Necrophagist's Onset of Putrefaction's brisk and complex rhythmical intensity, all groaning over killer plowing solos, meteoric riffs, fierce machine gun double bass pelts and scything melodic leads in the vein of Mors Principium Est.

The album starts with a portentous one-minute long prologue instrumental for the most part with a storytelling sough at the end uttering, "people should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people," perching as a war signal to unleash the madness that awaits in "Opposition" and continues ceaselessly throughout the entire scorcher. The tracks are genuinely connected, well-balanced, highly technical and furiously fast. The drumming is simply flawless, very precise and unwavering. Mike Semesky's growls have got to be the best over the last decade and arguably in the top ten of all-time in the progressive/death territory. They are very powerful, strident and uplifting, and cope perfectly with the other instruments including the guitars, which by the way are nothing less than impeccable. Greg Macklin and Gunter Ostendorp seem to have reached another level of guitar-burning shredding; "How The Biased Live" and "Desensitizing Process" are testimony to their glittering proficiency. The record is well-produced, the sound is crystal clear and the only weak spot that I could find in it was Mike's clean vocals because, as opposed to his growls, they aren't that consistent and have a tendency to swerve towards whispers rather than clean vocals. I wouldn't go as far as flagging them as "flaws" though, they are still pretty catchy. But aside from that, this record is insanely sick!!

I'm not going to finish this review with a florid epilogue, nor am I going to wrap it up by simply saying that this is probably the best progressive technical death record over the last decade and probably for many years to come. I'm just going to say this: Don't even dare to call yourself a metalhead until you have listened to this monster.