Review by Sonny for Immortal Bird - Empress/Abscess (2015)

The Immortal Bird that recorded this 2015 album is very different from the three-piece that exists to this day with only vocalist Rae Amitay remaining. Drummer Gary Naples and guitarist Evan Anderson Berry left not long after "Empress/Abscess" hit the shelves, being replaced by Matt Korajczyk and Nate Madden respectively. Bassist John Picillo left in 2019 and hasn't been replaced with Madden doubling up on both four- and six-string guitars. It is good then that Rae Amity has remained as the only constant factor in the band because there is a rounded depth to her ravaged, bellowing shrieks that would be quite difficult for any other singer to replicate. She has a line in controlled fury that is distinctive and powerful and which would put the ineffectual bellowings of many metal tough guys to shame.

Immortal Bird play an amalgam of black and death metal that sounds immediate and confrontational with a suggestion of crusty sludginess that gives the material a further coating of grimy filthiness along with a twist of dissonance for added discomfort. With the five tracks on "Empress/Abscess" only nudging a hair's breadth over thirty minutes there is never any danger of attention wander, although the more timid listener may want to flee and lock themselves in the bathroom. Comfort is not something that Immortal Bird are interested in dishing up, they have a jagged and angular approach to songwriting that will keep you on you toes and which, with other bands, I often struggle. However just when it feels like the band are pushing you to the edge they have an uncanny ability to suddenly drop into a killer riff and sweep you away on a tide of moshpit fury. I get the feeling that the convulsive nature of the songwriting isn't to appear intellectually sophisticated or technically smug, which I feel is the case with some of the acts who write this way, but it is done with the aim of unsettling and disorienting the listener so that when they drop one of those killer riffs it hits all the harder.

So, overall, with a sometimes challenging but always interesting songwriting style, some genuinely exhliharating riffs and one of, if not the, finest female vocalists in all of metal there is plenty here on this short album to keep drawing me back to it time and again. Immortal Bird are one of those bands that I genuinely cannot fathom why they aren't bigger than they are.