Of Winter Born

Album Review

This somewhat ridiculously named five-piece from England plays brutal, technical death metal with reasonable proficiency. As with many young bands, it's possible to close your eyes while listening to their songs and picture the members' record collections, and in this case the shelves/iPods would definitely include the collected works of Decapitated, Metallica's ...And Justice for All, everything by the Black Dahlia Murder, and At the Gates' Slaughter of the Soul, just to start. There are odd bits here and there that show even greater promise, like a breakdown toward the end of the title track that's pure Amon Amarth, and there are some nice production tricks scattered about. Which is fine; those are all very good bands to steal from, if you're gonna steal, and these guys, particularly guitarists Steven Brown and Danny Guy, are skilled players. However, barring some radical compositional or technical breakthrough, it would be extraordinarily difficult for a group like Ignominious Incarceration to break out of the pack, given the limitations of death metal as a genre.