Immortal Bird – Thrive on Neglect (Review)

Immortal Bird are a blackened deathgrind band from the US. This is their second album.

Finally we have the follow up to 2015’s Empress/Abscess, which was one of the more notable releases of that year for me. Ahh, it’s nice to hear the band’s atypical intensity back. It sounds better than ever too, with a well-rounded production that is fuller and warmer than in the past.

Hard to classify, Immortal Bird’s sound can loosely be placed in a death metal framework, but this is fleshed out with progressive grindcore, sludge, and hardcore influences, and then coated with a fine blackened sheen. In fact, I’d say that there’s a greater black metal influence this time around, but as it turns out that’s no bad thing at all.

Blackened melodies and grinding savagery mix together like the easiest of bedfellows. Muscular death metal rips through the unwary without hesitation, while lethal hardcore energy bleeds into the music like raw venom. I enjoy how creative Immortal Bird are with the genres they splice into Thrive on Neglect. Mixing different styles together can easily be done poorly, and despite the band’s past performance in this area, it still could have gone wrong. Clearly it hasn’t, however, and these new songs are better than ever.

How have they achieved this? Well, although the improved production has certainly helped, it’s mainly all about the songwriting. The band have tightened this up and worked hard on their riffs, transitions, and aggressive atmospheres. Seamlessly incorporating different genres together like this may look easy, but that’s only down to how well Immortal Bird do it.

Thrive on Neglect is a full, hearty extreme metal feast. Packed with interesting and enjoyable content across the seven individual tracks, this is an album to get obsessed by.