Father Befouled - Morbid Destitution of Covenant (2010)

Recently I was reading about a number of new bands who have supposedly dedicated their musical energy to paying tribute to classic 90's death metal, in particular its said that a lot of them were following in Incantation's footsteps. Therefore if mimicry is the highest form of flattery than I'd say John McEntee will no doubt be up to his neck in it after he hears, 'Morbid Destitution of Covenant.'

Only a few months ago I had something of an Incantation resurrection after not listening to the band for years, in fact (at some point) I sold all of my old Incantation records when I wasn't preferring this brand of death metal. However as I've said in the past year or so my hunger for death metal has been a bit stronger than my interest in black metal and that's essentially what lead me back to a band I started with years and years ago.

But, anyway, as I've already said Father Befouled is going for that classic Incantation sound and they pull if off splendidly too. Eleven songs grace this beast during its thirty eight minute duration, but in a way it feels like one long song because each song bleeds right into the other and the constant shifts from blasting brutal death metal to the heavily downtuned creepy doom/death style is prevalent until the 10th song, an outro, which is some sort of choral Gregorian chant keyboard composition... also curiously the longest song on the album at almost seven minutes.

However I think what I just love about this record and the Incantation style in general is that its always ominous, bleak, exciting, intense, atmospheric, sickening, hideous, technical and just plain massively brutal all at the same time. Really everything from the heavy as hell guitars and their dynamic flair to the bludgeoning drumming and ultra low vocals is perfect on this record. Of course its nothing original but when you pay tribute to gods like Incantation you'd best do it right and I'd say these guys absolutely nailed it.

This Illinois/Georgia based band known as Father Befouled has been at it since 2007 and already with one demo, two EPs, three splits and two full-lengths behind them it would seem they are quite serious about what they do. It should be interesting to see if they continue on in this style or introduce something new to their music in the future, especially considering that fact that some of the members have a black metal background. Either way my opinion on, 'Morbid Destitution of Covenant' is set and all I can say in the end is that this one just kills everything in its path!