Just... Fucking hell, one only needs to look at this beauty’s cover to know exactly what he’s getting into; a dark, intense journey, powered by all things Satan! And indeed, this is some of the most rabid, diabolical death/thrash ever conceived. If the most savage incarnation of Kreator, early Deicide, Holy Terror and Sadus got stitched together into an unholy, shrieking beast, “Stigmata Me, I’m in Misery” is exactly what you’d get.
Truly, the Inquisitor guys took many hints from the diaper days of death metal, back when the style was mostly just very violent, putrid thrash. While “Sigmata Me, I’m In Misery” does wallow in the darkness and brutality inherent to death metal, it’s generally devoid of the more twisted songwriting that has come to be one of its main characteristics. Discounting a few exceptional moments, the band mostly sticks to two tempos; “very fast” and “even faster”. The drums pummel and blast with an, at best, vague understanding of restraint, and the guitar work consists mainly of a combination of palm muted and tremolo riffs scientifically designed to dislodge the listener’s cranial unit from his thorax, but a special mention must be reserved for the vocals, in all of their throat-ravaging glory.
Alex Wesdijk’s pipes sound wretched and corroded in all the best ways, like the missing link between Darren Travis and David DiSanto, complete with horrific, “the human throat doesn’t work like that” quasi-falsetto screams. More standard growls can also be heard from time to time, but their use is very sparse and mostly present to emphasize a particular section, and the same goes for leads, which mostly manifest as brief explosions of frantic melody amongst a sea of thrashing madness. This is a record dominated by the rhythm guitar and the drums, with the vocals raging like wildfire on top of the whole thing.
Picking highlights is almost an exercise in futility, as Inquisitor’s second album is a remarkably consistent assault on the senses.
