If there is one period and sound in metal history that gets me going like a small kid in a sweet shop, it’s 1990s Sweden. I know it’s a shocking revelation given my love of the melodic side of the underground, but it’s true. By uncanny coincidence, German band The Infernal Deceit feel the same way. The list of influences cited for their second album, The True Harmful Black, reads like a connoisseur’s guide to the range of melodic black and death metal coming out of Europe’s favorite penis-shaped country back then.
The Infernal Deceit makes good on those promises. It’s all sweeping tremolo melodies and one Stockholm meets Gothenburg riff after another. It’s all well executed and there’s never a moment of The True Harmful Black that leaves me bored. Yet, somehow, it does regularly leave me wanting more. Some of it is a lack of variation in rhythm and tempo. The Infernal Deceit sometimes accelerate to whiplash speeds, as with “The Primordial Maze and the Crawling Chaos” and “Schwarz”, and there’s two interludes, but there’s very little of the grooving riffs or punk influences that often formed part of the Swedish sound. Maybe a little on the grandiosely titled “The Great Seducer, The Greatest Deceiver (Dethroned)” A bigger problem is that the black and death metal influences never marry up. The True Harmful Black almost feels like a split between two bands where they’ve mixed up the track order. The Infernal Deceit are a good melodic black metal band, and a good melodic death metal band, but they’re not so good as a combination of the two.
This review has focused far more on the negatives than the positives and that’s not fair as The True Harmful Black is a fun, solid album. The reason for that is the positive here — 90s Swedish Melodic Metal riffs done right — is a very simple one to describe, and the negative of uncohesive, undynamic songwriting is deeply frustrating. I wanted those great riffs to be great songs on a great album really badly, and The Infernal Deceit are a bit short. I’ll enjoy The True Harmful Black, but I’m hoping the next one knocks my socks off.
