THE INCURABLE TRAGEDY

The Incurable Tragedy, if anything, reminds us that Into Eternity still has a death fetish. After naming their last two albums using a verb and a noun, they decided to go adjective-noun, and the result is a bit less intriguing. Fans should find solace in knowing that the songs are still a bunch of erratic musical emissions resulting from the band's said fetish. The result is most certainly an auditory tragedy which apparently has no cure, much like my awful pun usage.

I will not joke further, and have already withheld a lot of my scathing remarks, though, because band leader Tim Roth recently lost two close friends, and both his parents. It's got to be a tough time for him right now, and my condolences go out to him.

Still, I must say that this record is not worth your time. There are some great riffs, and they cleared up the production problems of the last record, but everything is thrown together so thoughtlessly as always. Maybe the band does think this stuff out, but if so, they're simply oblivious to how awkward their transitions are. They don't make sense and they don't accomplish what I think they're trying to. Plus, the vocals have gotten even more grating as the band now has both sung and rasped shrieks along with those death growls. If you are a metal fan, especially one who likes both black metal and Judas Priest, you will have no problem dealing with this aspect, but hopefully the speed and pseudo-prog shifts will not fool you into thinking this is intelligent or, for that matter, good. These guys can play, but they can't write. I could deal with the erratic writing two albums ago, but I expected them to tweak their approach, work more ideas into each song and develop a more natural flow. Instead, the band is more repetitive and spastic than ever. Oh well.

This is a repeat offense, and even if its production is a whole lot better than that on The Scattering of Ashes the writing is worse, not to mention the group has hardly progressed. Pin it to their recent tragedies (pun not really intentional), fine, but albums can only legitimately (to some degree - I don't buy into any of that) ride on a sob story (to some degree - I don't buy into any of that) if something good came out of it. Even if there are some solid riffs and/or ideas here and there, I can't recommend this to anyone. My interest in this band has completely vanished, and I'm not sure they will ever reach their potential.

I can't believe these terrible ratings. While the album is nothing to write home about, it's a listenable disc of melodic death metal with hints of prog.

Evidently, the record is a step back after the very competent "The Scattering of Ashes" (also pummeled in the ratings here in PA, for reasons beyond me.) That disc was a very acceptable progressive- technical death metal effort, with hints of SYMPHONY X, PAIN OF SALVATION, but mostly with strong death metal elements. The songs were very similar in structure (verses with melodic choruses), the growling was efficient, and the riffs were technical and interesting.

All is not lost in "The Incurable Tragedy" but some of these strengths are not as evident now. First, the riffs and the different sections seem to have been arranged in the first order that came to mind of the musicians; everything is a little bit chaotic here. Second, the vocals have gotten higher, at times barely resembling growling at all. The music is much more similar to melodic death metal bands like SCAR SYMMETRY or SOILWORK, but probably without the constant prog elements of the former or the coherence of the latter.

This band suffers from the "show-off" syndrome of many tech/extreme bands whose drummers think that constantly playing fills and double bass at incredible speeds ads any magic to the music. This "I'm a star" mentality, so typical of prog rock today (listen to THE MARS VOLTA's drummer for a sad example) is also very present in progressive-metal bands, or bands that formerly known as prog- metal like INTO ETERNITY.

In the end, the right rating for the album would be a 2.5. I don't have that rating available here so I'll round down this time, as I think giving "The Incurable Tragedy" 3 stars would be putting it in the same level of its much-better predecessor.

But, again, this is no 1-star album. It's listenable and entertaining, if not really brilliant, or too progressive.

Their last album to date, the fifth from their catalogue named The incurable tragedy is another worthy album from them. Keeping the same attitude as before, maybe a little more atmospheric in parts. Into Eternity keeps to combine in great measure the melodic death metal, remind me of In Flames in some arrangements with spectacular progresive metal chops not far from DT. To me this album is another ex of good release, not so well recived as other releases, but still enjoyble most of the time. Again I don't understand the low rating this band recive . This album is not better then before but not weaker either, so why only 2.26 rate. I observe that when clean vocal enters the passages reminds me of how sings Rob Halford, very high, but in the end melts ok with the rougher ones. Technical death metal, the melodic side of it, very well played, the musicianship is fantastic again , but when I finished the album I said same thing this music is aimless, or at least this album and the prior one. I don't know why exactly but Buried into oblivion had that special attraction from ther first listning, a thing that doesn't happing with this one and the album befor this ne. The music is ok, but the magic is not here. So, all pieces are well played and performed, desearve 3 stars , a good album but no more then that. For fans of Becoming the Archetype, In Flames, Nevermore, Dream Theater, etc.