Act of Impalement is new for me, but the band has been around since 2012. They are a U.S. doom death metal band, but the first listening, gives you a strong feeling of Cianide, Bolt Thrower and Entombed. A new line-up for this album. Jerry Garner plays Bass and has has replaced ,Jimmy Grogan. And a new drummer in Aaron Hortman, instead of Zack Ledbetter And to get some justice in this. I do of course have to go back to their Infernal Ordinance album (2023) and backwards and listen. A new drummer and bass guitar player, often has an impact on the music, and the sound.

The first track is "Apparition" a heavy one, a lot of the doom metal sound, is based on the guitar and the bass, I don't get that doom death feeling, like My Dying Bride...and those typical  bands. It's more in the atmosphere when it comes to the Act of Impalement. "Piercing the Heavens" is a lesson in that. We speak two minutes of something that Bolt Thrower could have done. But this is way more heavy. And that groovy bass is a huge reason for that. The bass player Jerry Garner adds a lot . Instead for go track by track, I take ones, that I find interesting, "Sanguine Rites" is one of them. The track has some kind of 6/8 time signature, like Slayer's "Postmortem", or Sadus “Hands of Fate”. It's pretty common in the 80s and the 90s extreme metal, heavy metal. I did not expect to hear it in "Sanguine Rites". Aaron Hortman seems to be a drummer that want to do more, then keep the pace. Respect.

"Piercing the Heavens" is for me black metal, crust punk beats, really extreme, nice. The track "Profane Altar" start like doom, death ...but then we are back in the more extreme metal land again. I can't get this band to a doom death metal genre band, so have to do more research ....And with their own word's (Profane Altar fittingly sees the trio adding much darker and more aggressive elements to their still-surprising sound. Though still drawing from the likes of Autopsy, Incantation, and of course Cianide, Act of Impalement's third album is a filthy & finely honed assault of bestial death metal, drawing more inspiration from the likes of Belgium's Possession, Finland's Belial, and ever more Archgoat.)
That explains a lot :).