Infernal Coil’s ‘Within A World Forgotten’ Bursts With Surprising Experimental Fury

Infernal Coil proves via their incendiary new album that there’s still a lot available to be done with extreme music. Every possible connection hasn’t been made yet — every possible sound hasn’t been heard yet. In the right hands, music can be taken far beyond where it as at present.

The members of Infernal Coil do just that on Within A World Forgotten, which presents an enthralling blend of textures ranging from epic, brutal black metal to experimental noise and including a lot from the space in between, like grindcore and acoustics (!). The band’s brutal presentation is but the surface level of their work. There’s a lot more at play, which the brutality helps give meaning and depth to and which itself grows the heaviness.

It’s almost surprising to turn Infernal Coil’s new record on and dig into exactly what it has to offer — it’s that strikingly fresh. It’s their debut full length, but on the strength of their sound alone, it’s hard to imagine that their impact will fade anytime soon. They’re touring in late 2018 with Sumac — the noise rock project featuring Aaron Turner, Nick Yacyshyn, and Brian Cook — and the pairing with a great of the experimental noise “genre” honestly makes sense after metaphorically sinking one’s teeth into Within A World Forgotten. The acts’ sounds don’t present as exactly the same, but the spirit of pushing music to its extremes — and perhaps learning something in the process — descends with a vengeance via the new Infernal Coil release just as it does through any number of other great extreme records.

The band feels willing to do anything their artistic drives demand of them. At one point on their new record, one can even hear soft — pretty much whispered — singing atop acoustic guitar before a spiral out into further extremity. The jarring shifts fit together with a dark beauty, though — there’s no feeling of something being disparate, with a foreboding ethereal force keeping the material in line. In the midst of the chaos, there’s a unifying drive that ensures the ferocious record is strikingly memorable. For a fan of extreme music looking for something exciting and new, Within A World Forgotten might be just the right fix.

5/5 Stars

Listen to a single released ahead of the album below.