Band:	Inborn Suffering
Album:	Regression To Nothingness
Style:	Death metal, Doom metal
Release date:	July 09, 2012
A review by:	BitterCOld

01. Slumber Asylum
02. Born Guilty
03. Grey Eden
04. Apotheosis
05. Another World
06. Regression To Nothingness
07. Self Contempt Kings

Regression To Nothingness is the sophomore effort by les hommes du doom, Inborn Suffering. After taking several years off following the well regarded '06 release Wordless Hope these French doomsters (restating in case "les hommes du doom" wasn't obvious enough) decided to reconvene and crank out another death doom offering.

And make no mistake, Regression To Nothingness is a massive, sprawling death doom offering with seven tracks clocking in over 72 minutes.

It starts out all well enough. The first three tracks are what one might expect of a death doom release on Solitude Productions. The bands are capable, the music sounds solid, well produced, and the elements one would expect of a death doom album are present. Crunching slow riffs which fade to mellower measures at times, guttural inhuman vocal roars played against darkly inflected spoken segments. Like I said, it's all well and good.

Until we come to the fourth track.

Mirriam-Webster (well at least the website with their name, I didn't hold a séance to contact the originals) defines "Apotheosis" as "elevation to divine status." I'm not going to go quite that far, but there is something about the fourth track, coincidentally named "Apotheosis", which has never failed to rip my attention away from whatever else might have been distracting me and just sucked me in. As with the album it starts out fine, then about halfway through an urgent guitar line kicks in, intensity builds, and right about the howl at 6:50 my attention gets got.

It seems from that point on the album, though sounding not terribly different from the prior tracks, just feels more urgent, demanding. "Another World" starts off with what sounds like an attempt at a Bolt Thrower advancing-column-of-tanks riffs through the death-DOOM perspective. Closer "This Is Who We Are" features some uptempo segments and a little fretboard shredding that fits the mood nicely.

Doom is about feel, which is a bit more personal when interpreting and enjoying music, so individual mileage will vary. I just felt that while the first half was good, the second half just felt more compelling and thus more enjoyable. Total score for the album (7.5) being the average between the two.