Ingested The Tide of Death and Fractured Dreams

Can deathcore be good? Yes, of course - Fit For An Autopsy’s “Hydra” exists. Ingested also believe good deathcore exists and tries their damnedest to create some of it while anchoring it in some straight-up death metal and licks of slam. Do they succeed? Yeah, actually.

You’ll have to excuse my implied incredulity in the last paragraph because I’ve heard enough deathcore and metalcore in two decades to know that, generally speaking, it’s not really for me. It chugs, it breakdowns, it’s got more BREE than an artisan cheese store. It’s wack and ignorant to write off a whole genre though, so I persist - I try out new stuff, I investigate things that come my way, and in the case of The Tide Of Death And Fractured Dreams, I’m glad I did because there’s more to it than that.

This UK group has a couple things down that many other bands don’t: writing and, more abstractly, attitude. I don’t get the sense that Ingested are trying to be like anyone else when it comes to the core of their music. Their aesthetics may ring true among deathcore and slam stalwarts, but we’ll get into that later. The good news is I can hear songs like “Endless Machine” and “Starve The Fire” and pick out cool things that I haven’t heard executed well in this particular sound profile.

Really, The Tide Of Death And Fractured Dreams lives by its drive too. Each song has weight and it never seems to stop moving forward, even when things get slower and more precise like on the interlude “Numinous” or the great closer “A Path Once Lost” which has stellar clean vocals reminiscent of early Black Crown Initiate. The music never feels meandering or lost for a way to the next section. This is where the good writing comes into play - even when Ingested play to the tropes and expectations of genre, they’re relatively compelling and this does a lot for an album with clear on-the-sleeve influences.

One thing I wasn’t sold on were the utilization of guests. Sylosis’ Josh Middleton joins the vocals on “Expect To Fail” with a lighter timbre of scream that acts as a foil to Ingested’s Jay Evans, but other than that it didn’t leave much of a mark. Mark Hunter of Chimaira gets moody on “In Nothingness”, but his work makes the song lose some steam during the hook which is exactly where you don’t want that to happen. Despite this, instrumentation is strong and varied enough to not mar the tracklist and I’ll give a specific shoutout to the riffs on “In Nothingness” which feel well-crafted and the right kind of edgy - the melody at the end of the track is chef’s kiss worthy.

My only real gripe with this album overall is how it insists on sounding just like a deathcore album. I understand the band are rooted in that sound, but very similar guitar tones, standard lyrics, vocal performances, and even some melody approaches just smack of things I’ve heard before, only worse. The reason why this album’s well-liked by me and it’s getting the score it’s getting is because it’s presented in a more interesting manner than I’m used to, but some variance might’ve garnered even more favor from me. I get that’s like asking chicken to betray its nature and not taste like chicken, but here we are.

Bottom Line: I realize some of what I said may come off as a backhanded compliment, a long-form version of “yeah, this is good… for what it is”. That certainly wasn’t the intention because, regardless of genre or my prejudices, I did enjoy most of what The Tide Of Death And Fractured Dreams had to offer. It’s gonna make me keep an eye out for Ingested’s future stuff because if they can impress me with this, what else can they do?