Review by Tobias on May 8, 2001.

For a band that touts stupid little slogans like "Play this at maximum volume or be a wimp" or "If you don’t enjoy this record, fuck off and die" on their CD sleeve, I would expect something either as powerful or terrifying as hell.

But that’s not what you get with In Aeternum’s The Pestilent Plague. In fact, if any band is so bold to write crap like that on their CD, you can bet your ass there’ll be people like me to shred those idiotic claims. To save time, I think I’ll just bullet point what these candyass dolts deliver:

• Almost laughable growls. This guy… or kid, I’m not quite sure… has his real voice bursting through the seams of his tired and mundane growling. Fire him.
• The guitar work sounds exactly the same across the board. It’s simple in a bad way and completely unimaginative. Go to hell.
• The lyrics are about the dumbest thing I’ve heard since Chinchilla’s Madness album. "Kill the Christians, kill them all!" and "I curse you all" are likely the high points… and that is pathetic. These numb-nuts should take a lesson from the 80’s cyberpunk Foetus who’s big track was The only Good Christian is a Dead Christian. Guess what, THEY BROKE UP and they were MORE IMAGINATIVE. Besides, didn’t every freaking death metal band in the 80’s already do that?
• Bass is drab, but what else would you expect from an album on which every song sounds the same.
• Drumming is completely uneventful and just seems to plod along with the rest of the losers.
• Everything about this band screams mediocrity. They want to be scary and they make me laugh. If they want to be frightening they should try taking a hint from Lamb of God.

This is the most mediocre and boring death metal I’ve heard in a long time… perhaps I wouldn’t be so hard on them if they weren’t conceited enough to actually print that truckload of chicken feces on the inside cover.

Bottom Line: These guys are the equivalent of a conceited film director that’s made nothing but low budget, not scary, B horror movies.

Rating: 3 of 10