Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Ingested - Ashes Lie Still (2022)

Since the Suicide Silence feature release lifted the lid on deathcore for me, I have been meaning to pick out another album to continue my still tentative exploration into the sub-genre. In all honesty I stumbled across Ingested’s, Ashes Lie Still by accident. Drawn in initially by that Seidman artwork I was soon under the realisation that this was not a brutal death metal death metal album as I first believed. More importantly perhaps, I was enjoying it, nonetheless.

Hailing from Manchester, UK the band have been around for seventeen years. Playing slam/brutal death metal initially before branching out into the realms of deathcore in their later years, Ingested have been able to draw a couple of renowned names into working with them on album number seven. None other than Matt Heafy of Trivium fame and Sven De Caluwe of Aborted and (formerly) Leng Tch’e guest on the record and both have an audible input. The spite in the vocals on From Hollow Words by Sven being of note whilst the more electronic and metalcore influences on Heafy’s track (All I’ve Lost) are also obvious.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the main takeaway I get from Ashes Lie Still is the riff work. They reverberate superbly against the percussive elements of the sound, and I find them a lot less triggering than I expected them to be, with my fear that they would just veer off into unnecessary and unwarranted directions not being realised. Instead, the riffs are solid and consistent, adding real structure to the tracks alongside the superb drums of Lyn Jeffs. The breakdowns, whilst still not the most palatable aspect of things for me, are still well placed and do not manage to interrupt the flow of the music at any point.

There are some clever moments of dissonance applied also that add depth to the album. The guitar chimes on tracks such as Tides of Glass and this welcome intrusion does a superb job of helping the pacing of that track. The atmospheric intro to All I’ve Lost also sets a great mood before the real fury gets unleashed on that track. Overall, there is a lot I find myself liking on this record. In summary it is an album I find to be a real powerhouse that flexes its influences well. Despite all that is going on here, I am hearing a really vicious death metal record at its centre – which is kind of the point, I know.