Band:	Innumerable Forms
Album:	Punishment In Flesh
Style:	Death metal
Release date:	August 17, 2018
A review by:	RaduP

01. Intruders
02. Punishment In Flesh
03. Petrified
04. Purity's Demand
05. Reality
06. Re-Contaminated
07. Stress Starvation
08. Joyless
09. Firmament
10. Meaning

Do you like your death metal so raw, slow, and dirty that you'd swear it was released in Finland in the early '90s but instead it was released in Boston in 2018? You're in luck!

Innumerable Forms is a project that has been going on for just a bit over 10 years but has only now managed to come out with a proper full-length instead of demos, splits and EPs. For most of its existence, up until 2016, it was solely the project of Justin DeTorre, whom you may know as the drummer of Sumerlands or the bassist of Magic Circle. Along for the ride are members of Power Trip, Genocide Pact, and Iron Lung, so you could make the case that it's a supergroup of sorts. And now comes Punishment In Flesh on Profound Lore.

Covered in that thick, impenetrable, buzzing guitar tone, Punishment In Flesh is leaning much closer to death-doom than simply old-school death metal, with some instances of going as slow as funeral doom. Since none of the songs break the six-minute mark, they don't focus as much on epics or creating atmosphere through the slower pace, but rather they pack more of a punch. Each drum hit is pummeling and each riff is crushing. Sometimes there is a release into faster territories, sometimes it's just torturous dragging. With such suffocatingly slow and low riffs, the leads feel like they're screaming, frightened under the weight.

And through the meaty riffs, the raw production, and the shorter, more concise songs, the sound of the album is a lot more primitive, truly feeling like a natural continuation the '90s work of Convulse or Demigod or, if we're to take it closer to Innumerable Forms's home, Incantation or Winter. While a very competent release, Punishment In Flesh neither creates a new sound, nor updates an old one. Instead, with the popularity of the old-school death metal genre and endless bands recreating the sounds of the giants before them, Innumerable Forms found some giants that were a bit more overlooked. While the caverncore Incantation worship has been mildly popular, the early Finnish death-doom hasn't.

There is no reinvention or refinement of the wheel here, just a bunch of Boston hardcore scene kids who wanted to pay tribute to the Finnish death-doom sound. Competent and crushing, but not that much to really maintain interest. But if it makes you miss the sound it pays tribute to, it did its job.