Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you one of the worst attempts at death metal ever: In Battle's Kingdom of Fear. Never has anything so uninspired passed my ears after years of listening to death metal; it is definitely an album I truly hate with every binding thread in my soul. To understand how bad this record is, one must try to envision the exact opposite of clever brutality with fantastic musicianship. Forget what you know about intelligence or originality in death metal, because In Battle has completely trashed the ideas of death metal dignity with Kingdom of Fear.There isn't much to say about this CD beside it defines generic bullsh*t with predictable riffs, mindless blastbeats, and horrible pseudo-growls. Is anything original? Nope, just pick a few easy chords at calculable intervals and toss foreseen percussion patterns over it; that's Kingdom of Fear in a nutshell. Is there any energy? Nein Danke! With John Sandin's one-toned voice, all you can expect is constant barking for forty-five minutes with no variation between high and low growls. Add in horrible production with stupid lyrics, and stir the disgusting soup of foreseeable feces into a bowl of redundancy. Now prepare for the worst case of diarrhea imaginable; that's Kingdom of Fear stinking up your f*cking toilet.
Contributing to the woes is In Battle's unacceptable copy-paste writing methodology that once again displays no exotic elements at all. Every offensive composition is built upon the same pattern of performing a select musical formation for one to two minutes, and then switching to something different for the same amount of time before ending at around four minutes. Why is this bad? Because the sum amount of tracks change tempos at identical intervals, which the listener will soon pick up on. The record's total duration is forty-four minutes, which is spread amongst eleven tunes; ironically, doing a little math shows there's an even average of four minutes per song. I guess paying attention to that bitchy math teacher in 3rd grade really paid off!
Basically, In Battle is using the same song eleven times with different music and calling it an album. I, for one, appreciate variety in my music, and I find it very annoying when hearing the same texture again and again without any change in structural foundations. There are no epic crushers here or any attempt at change; just four minutes of boring death metal under the same sun. In Battle think they're all smart and cool for playing in a death metal band, but Odin would kick their poser-Viking asses off the battlefields of Ragnarok once he got wind of this atrocity.
Whether you're dissecting the watered-down riffs, the dull vocals, the nasty writing job, or whatever else I missed; you'll find the same thing: sh*t. If I had the authority to present a trophy to the worst death metal record ever, I'd definitely give it to Kingdom of Fear and let the chimps of In Battle bask in glory with the only award they'll ever have. This one's having lunch with the furnace, baby!