With Anathema having recently revisited their early doom/death days on the Resonance tour and Paradise Lost about to unleash their heaviest album since 1995, now seems like the ideal (draconian) time for Indesinence to return with their third full-length, plainly titled III and set for release on the 21st of July through the respected Profound Lore Records.
For fifteen years Indesinence have been honing their Peaceville Three-indebted doom/death and enthralling those with their ear to the British underground. But what makes this London four-piece so deadly is how they regularly magnify their death metal side, thus making the doom passages feel more portentous as the tempo drops to a crawl.
III, standing at a staggering 71 minutes, is Indesinence’s most varied, distinctive album to date; there’s plenty of Morbid Angel mysticism at play in their music, and the suffocating atmosphere of Incantation is also cast without sacrificing clarity of sound. It’s a labyrinthine trip that sucks you in from the beginning, only to expel your withered body as the title track’s sonorous ambient drones fade out.
Now streaming above is second song ‘Nostaglia’. With vocalist/guitarist Ilia Rodriquez’s Vincentesque roar leading stately doom passages early on — listen for the undulating bass-lines and understated leads which act as a counterpoint to the tombstone-heavy riffs and slamming drums — you’d anticipate that Indesinence might be content to languish in this throttling slow tempo for ‘Nostalgia’s 8-plus-minutes. Instead, without a second’s hesitation, new drummer Paul Westwood’s double bass erupts and they shift through various grinding death metal syncopations. The sharp rhythms flit between destructive blasts and at one point, D-beats, before slowing once again to the gothic doom of the song’s beginning.
‘Nostalgia’ is entirely indicative of seasoned musicians who are completely confident in their chosen style and who know how to engage a listener and keep their attention fixated on the horrid, flickering shapes they conjure in your mind’s eye.