Infernal Wrath

Mumbai extreme metal act Infernal Wrath have become a name to reckon with on the live scene since they formed over four years ago. Naturally, expectations had been running high ever since news trickled out of them working on their debut album. So does Inside of Me, released last month, live up to those collective hopes? Yes. And no. The album has five metal tracks bookended and bridged by six ambient ones. Now while this sounds fantastic as a concept, I am not quite sure that it really works. The jump in energy levels from song to song is a bit too much to let me enjoy it as an album in its entirety. I found myself skipping the ambient tracks very often to get straight to the heavier ones. This is not to take away from the quality of musicianship on each track, metal or otherwise. Each band-member is in prime form on Inside of Me, especially Prashant ”˜JP’ Paradkar with his precision drumming, and Pradeep Pande with his crushing riffs. Standouts include tracks like ”˜Inside of Me,’ ”˜Behold Ezekiel’ and ”˜The Destruction of the Third Temple,’ all seemingly designed to with one express purpose: Get you headbanging manically.