Infernal Execrator – Ad Infinitum Satanic Adherent

Infernal Execrator is a band that doesn’t fuck around. By the time you’ve finished reading the track titles for their debut full-length album, Ad Infinitum Satanic Adherent, the album has finished and left you wondering what happened. To say their music is a lot to take in is an understatement, especially considering how many influences and styles they pack into such a short runtime.

The band hails from Singapore, the home of fellow extreme metal conquerors like Abhorer and Impiety, and it’s easy to see that Infernal Execrator owes a great deal to these pioneers. But where the band doesn’t come across as a third-rate war metal clone is where they show the biggest influence from their nation’s black metal heavyweights: they’re not here to copy, they’re here to conquer as well.

Ad Infinitum Satanic Adherent does in twenty-five minutes what many albums can’t do with an hour. It spans the genres of black, death and thrash metal, but completely bypasses the notion of sterility by becoming too comfortable with any one approach. Bouncing between chaotic war metal, melodious death metal and thrashing old school black metal, this album keeps itself in check and tighter than most. Every riff sounds purposeful, and the concept of “filler” is nowhere to be seen. The most important part about the riffs on this album is the way they’re incorporated into different contexts. Where another band would change a lick with a tempo shift or style adjustment, the interplay between Lord Ashir and Shairan works to keep certain guitar riffs despite the changing nature of the song, and hearing these riffs adjust in speed in conjunction with different sections shows the versatility of the band and the music they’ve written. With solos varying from noisy and frantic dissonance to the more melodic and predictable, even technically focused and structured riffs beguile the listener into thinking they’re listening to a different band. Infernal Execrator will change their direction in an instant, necessitating a few listens to completely focus on and understand the depth and vastness of these short, but vital compositions.

Perhaps the biggest surprise about Infernal Execrator is the production. The production on Ad Infinitum Satanic Adherent is clear and presented in a way that most bands playing this style wouldn’t really have. Each instrument can be heard distinctively, but they all work together in a way that solidifies the tightness of the music. The only minor problem is that the drumming here is so sharply produced and executed that it sounds slightly programmed, but it doesn’t sound fake enough to warrant any real complaint or disdain from listeners, and if anything it’s only a credit to Christslaughter’s drumming prowess.

Infernal Execrator have been making some of the finest blasphemous underground metal in Singapore for the past ten years, and with Ad Infinitum Satanic Adherent, they’ve become one of the country’s finest bands. It would be a misstep for any fan of black or death metal to overlook them.