Death metal band Immolation releases new album "Descent"

Immolation released their new album, Descent, on August 18, reviewed 8 out of 10 by Under the Radar's Matthew Berlyant, who called the long-running Yonkers, New York band "an international treasure in the world of extreme metal." The review made clear Descent isn't a reinvention: rather than change course, the band offers variations on the themes it has returned to for decades, anti-religious subject matter and, since the early 2000s, an increasingly topical focus on man-made disasters.

Descent is the band's first album since 2022's Acts of God and the second to feature its current lineup of bassist and vocalist Ross Dolan, guitarist Robert Vigna, rhythm guitarist Alex Bouty and drummer Steve Shalaty. The band's career stretches back nearly 40 years to the 1991 underground classic Dawn of Possession, and Berlyant singled out 1996's Here In After, released five years later, as the record that established the dissonant, dark and brutal sound Immolation has built on ever since, with Dolan and Vigna anchoring a lineup that has otherwise rotated through a variety of drummers and second guitarists across that whole span.

The album does not depart from that formula so much as refine it: it runs more than 41 minutes and, per the review, "never lets up for a second" of its running time. Metal veteran Dan Lilker, known for his work with Anthrax, Nuclear Assault and Brutal Truth, returns for guest vocals on several tracks, as he did on Acts of God.

Berlyant singled out the ending of "Adversary" and the closing stretch of side one's "Attrition" as standout moments on the record, moments he wrote "just take your breath away" and make clear how the band sustains this level of intensity so deep into its career. "Long may they continue to do it," he wrote in closing.

The review offered no details on whether Immolation plans to tour behind Descent, leaving the album's release, tracked now on the release calendar, as the main event of this stretch of the metal band's calendar.