Review: Inversion – The Nature of Depravity
One of those lesser-known bands of the second-wave of Christian death metal (alongside bands like Corpse, Morbid Sacrifice, Secretion, and the like), California’s Inversion and their sole album The Nature of Depravity remain a pretty underground piece of Christian death metal history.
Rooted in the percussive and brutal stylings of Crimson Thorn, Disencumbrance and Faithful Witness, Inversion showcases a groove-heavy yet punchy death metal style very much in line with other second-wave Christian death metal bands of the late ’90’s and early 2000’s; in other words, fans of bands like Feast Eternal and Corpse will no doubt love this.
Inversion largely falls pretty squarely into the more brutal side of death metal stemming from bands like Crimson Thorn and early Embodyment, largely eschewing any penchant for melody (outside of some of the guitar solos) in favour of a fairly direct, percussive approach with deep guttural vocals. However, there is a somewhat eclectic approach to it all that reminds me of Metanoia’s work on In Darkness or in Light, an obvious willingness to tinker with the sound and even to veer off into almost hard rock territory with some of the guitar solos. A vast array of death metal influences can be heard here as well. Fans of Oblation and Obituary will love the slower crawl and guitar soloing heard on “The Butchering of Relative Thinking,” “Tears of Blood From An Angel In Mourning” sounds like a lost Antidemon track at times, and “Apocalyptic” channels the band’s obvious love for the Suffocation style. If you find yourself starving for more music like what Disencumbrance and Faithful Witness were doing with their extremely limited material, Inversion will satisfy your appetite for sure.
But where the band falls apart and veers off into eyebrow-raising territory is one the all-acoustic track “Thieves,” a soft track that sounds like a youth group campfire praise song inserted into a death metal playlist, and ends in raspy shrieking over strummed acoustic guitar. Awful doesn’t cover it; thank God it’s a one-off oddity on the album.
Inversion’s old cover art (you can still see it on their Metal Archives page if you want to) no doubt ensured that no Christian book/record store would even think of carrying it, even if they could have got their hands on a physical copy in the first place. Redone for the Rottweiler Records release, I can’t say that the replacement is much better; I’m pretty sure it’s just some AI art from the looks of it – and as an aside, I wish bands would stop doing this with their album covers (bring back real metal art!). Instead of the original art, we get a woman with a skull-like mask holding some money. Alright, I guess that’s supposed to imply some kind of lust-and-greed style depravity, so there we are.
Either way, the message of the band seems to be one of confronting secular ideological and societal attacks on a Christian worldview. Obviously, the album title is evoking a Calvinistic/Reformed theology (“total depravity”), and most of the songs seek to undermine human pride and arrogance when it comes to a life that rejects God. When it’s most effective is in songs like “The Butchering of Relative Thinking,” which makes some oblique references to Nietzschean philosophy, amongst other antagonistic philosophical systems employed to attack Christian belief, and “Independence,” which rather ominously asks: “How does it feel now on your own?…Does your rebellion keep you warm?” (reminiscent of John Calvin’s concept of atheism as the suppression of one’s innate knowledge of God; see Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book I, chapters 3 and 4).
In the end, though Inversion’s work here is well-executed enough, I find myself somewhat unexcited about it. None of the tracks really jumped out at me, though the band’s approach initially had me quite interested. It’s not that it’s bad per se by any means, it just ends up feeling like a bit of an also-ran album next to some of the more interesting offerings from the band’s contemporaries and predecessors. Still, despite my seemingly harsh criticism here, it remains an interesting artifact from Christian death metal’s second-wave period, and those who love mining the forgotten depths of extreme metal history will no doubt enjoy it.
Check it out HERE.
For Fans Of: Embodyment (early), Feast Eternal, Corpse, Disencumbrance, Faithful Witness, Metanoia, Crimson Thorn, Suffocation
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