Band:	Psycroptic
Album:	The Inherited Repression
Style:	Technical death metal
Release date:	February 07, 2012
A review by:	wormdrink414

01. Carriers Of The Plague
02. Forward To Submission
03. Euphorinasia
04. The Throne Of Kings
05. Unmasking The Traitors
06. Become The Cult
07. From Scribe To Ashes
08. Deprivation
09. The Sleepers Have Awoken

The changes Psycroptic made from Ob(Servant) to this thing were significantly subtler than the ones from Symbols Of Failure to Ob. The Ob trajectory, and its emphasis placed on craziness over brutality, was followed for this, so if you didn't dig the direction they went in 2008, or if you think they peaked with Scepters, this album probably won't be the one to sway you on these guys. The riffs are still Psycroptic-brand wobbly, and the death metal influences are still auxiliary to the quirky fretboard wanking. Just like with Ob.

That said, again like with Ob, the fretboard wanking doesn't come at the expense of good, viscerally-engaging and catchy riffs. There are still a lot of those. This ain't Necrophagist; graphing calculators may have been used in the songwriting process, but so were, I'm assuming, sledge hammers and large quantities of beer. This still has a Neanderthal, smack first, ask questions later quality to it that makes it fun.

The Aussie, son-of-a-convict, slouch hat-wearing, big knife wielding sensibilities aren't gone, in other words?this is still vicious shit. Kangaroos. It's just, wherever death metal influences were in their previous albums, they're almost non-existent now. The death metal bits in their first couple LPs survived really only in the occasionally growled vox on Ob, and those have been almost entirely suctioned out of their blend this time around. The vocals consist almost exclusively of hardcoreish shouts, teetering into screeches only occasionally and hardly ever morphing into growls. So make of that what you will, but as a fan of Peppiatt's vox approach on their last disc, I couldn't help but be a little disappointed with the lessened amount of variation in his performance for this.

Overall, you could say that The Inherited Repression is an album of Ob tweaks. The production has been altered making the kick drums sound less mattress-y, the snare less piercing, the vocals less untamable-sounding, the riffing slightly less in-your-face, and all that sci-fi-esque ambient filler has been obliterated? thank Jesus. It's not Ob(Servant)-lite so much as it is Ob(Servant) with a lower ABV. Regardless of whether you think that's a good or bad thing though, you're safe to start blasting this asap. Sure, some of the character and flavor these guys had in '08 seems very slightly lacking this time around, but that doesn't change the fact that The Inherited Repression is still a disc fans of tech death shouldn't miss out on.