Ingested – Denigration Review

It is hard to believe that Ingested is hitting their eighth record. A band that managed to bring slam to the relative mainstream, combining the grotesque, guttural brutality of extreme music with more core-infused elements. Their previous record, The Tide of Death and Fractured Dreams, leaned a little too hard into these elements. Losing much of the slam and focusing on simplified song structures to its detriment. Their latest release, Denigration, marks the first without founding vocalist Jason Evans, someone who defined the sound of Ingested. Unfortunately for the band, the album is also marked by tumult. With the departure of Evans, his replacement was quickly outed over sexual assault allegations, and at the last minute, guitarists Sean Haynes and Andrew Virrueta took over. The album was re-tooled to replace the vocals (something I commend the band for wholeheartedly), but was something excised in the process, or is it a return to form for a band that had seemingly lost its extreme roots?

I hate to break it to you, but Denigration is an album as messy as the story behind its creation. The album starts strongly, and unfortunately enough, with what is probably its best track. Half the band screams the opening line before the song drops into an absolute blast of destructive drumming. The track is simple but effective, and contains just enough variety and speed to keep things interesting. Haynes and Virrueta do an admirable job bringing heft and technical skill to each track, but they too often devolve into the same bouncing slam riffs to the point of bleeding together. Individual songs are hard to tell apart, and while founding drummer Lyn Jeffs has always been talented, the snare production basically kills his entire performance. This is nearly St. Anger levels of snare-tragedy, and the drums aren’t the only victim; production across the record is uniformly terrible.

Denigration by Ingested

Denigration’s Achilles heel is its soundscape. While dynamic range isn’t necessarily a surefire sign of quality, this album has songs that go as low as a 2 on the scale. Tracks are a cacophony in the worst way; the snare is downright grating and overly loud, while the rest blends into a miasma of noise and chuggery. This is an album with so little range between individual tracks that it can feel like one long song, which is grueling for a slam record. Top this with the fact that the last-minute fill-in vocalists are clearly amateurs, especially compared to Evans, and you get an album that sounds like a debut by a young band making early mistakes. I have to imagine replacing the vocals at the last minute did serious damage to their original mix, but Ingested has a history of production issues on top of this. Combining these two has made for an album that can hurt to listen to at times.

I don’t mean to disparage the band; in fact, this was a record I was genuinely hoping would be great. I have always had a soft spot for Ingested’s unique brand of slamcore. Evans vocals are top-tier, and they were always willing to take the genre to creative places. Julia Frau’s vocals on “Ashes Lie Still,” Kirk Windstein’s epic chorus on “Another Breath,” and Josh Middleton’s on “Expect to Fail” define the band’s willingness to explore their sound. On Denigration, the guests only work to divert from the monotony between tracks; even then, their addition feels perfunctory. This doesn’t feel like the band that wrote bangers like “Misery Leech,” “Skinned and Fucked,” or “The List.” At least they are trying to emulate their slam roots with a more streamlined sound built around the classic Chug & Guttural™ combo. There will be those who find this record more palatable than Ingested’s recent deathcore-adjacent trajectory, even if the production takes crushed and curb-stomps it.

When I originally started spinning Denigration for review, numerous elements kept coming to my attention that now feel obvious, seeing how many things changed at the last minute. What should have been a creative refresh for a band that felt like it was relying a little too much on vocal talent has turned into the exact opposite. Denigration fails to bring the hooks, a key to any good slam record, while also being hamstrung by terrible production, middling vocals, and a lack of creativity. Hopefully, Ingested can come back stronger from all this and make the great album I know they are capable of, but all Denigration did was send me straight to the band’s better records.