Impending Doom - The Serpent Servant

I saw the ads for this album, but never listened to it. If you want to know my personal history regarding Impending Doom, read my review of their first album. So instead, this is mainly going to just be about the album because I only just recently started listening to it. Word didn’t get out about the release of their first album because the amount of deathcore albums from that year was so overwhelming. When you look at sales, attention, and popularity for Impending Doom, The Serpent Servant was their major breakthrough album. The thing is, it’s my least favorite album by them.

Here’s the quick summary: the musicians improved, but the music declined. Let’s start with how the musicians have improved. The vocalist’s growls sound much more developed and strong, but they’re still not developed enough. His growls have lost most of their power; they sound tasteless and somewhat weak. The drummer is the one that’s improved the most. I’m now hearing him double kicking at lightning speed and being much more creative with his fills and blast beats; not to mention how much tighter he is during breakdowns. The guitarists have also stepped up their game, now being able to follow the drums in a much more organized and innovative fashion. Just like the previous album, I can’t hear the bass guitar (there’s tons of bass so it HAS to be in there somewhere).

The songs on this album are almost completely tasteless and bland. It’s not that they’re bad in any sense; none of them are bad at all. It’s that there’s nothing interesting or engaging about them AT ALL. Everything on this album lacks the attention-grabbing qualities that I expect to hear. Yes, the musicians’ improvements have made the music have much more texture, but there is no emotion present at any point in the album. Heaviness alone just won’t do it for me, there has to be emotion behind it; if it’s going to be brutal, there had better be a hell of a lot of fucking anger and ferocity behind it because without that, it’s empty.

A lot of lineup changes occurred after this album’s release. I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone, to be honest. There’s nothing that I can think of about this record that would cause it to be thought of as being “amazing” or “special” in any sense. I would give this 9/20.