US band Invertia and their imposing sound is tagged as industrial black metal by the accompanying press sheet to their new album Another Scheme of the Wicked. It is a label which fits suitably but only hints at the depth of the sinister textures, rapacious ingenuity, and insidious breath on offer. The band’s second release is a threatening invasive corrosion of senses and emotions, a consumption and incitement of the imagination which leaves you clutching at sanity. The album is virulently compelling, an entrapment rife with powerful hooks and intrusive manipulations which seduces and violates simultaneously whilst inviting thoughts to step through gateways of primal and man induced corruption.
Hailing from Massachusetts, Invertia is the creative union of guitarist/vocalist Dave Coppola and drummer/programmer Tim Winson. The pair first sent attention scurrying for cover with their self-titled debut album last year; the release marking out the band as a potentially incendiary proposition if without finding enough passions to awaken. Another Scheme of the Wicked not only realises that potential but takes it to darker dangerous potent levels and it is easy to assume it will be the spark to catch the radar of a much wider spotlight within extreme metal. Released via Ohm Resistance, the album consists of five new malignant journeys courted by another quintet of destructive remixes, doppelgangers of the originals if you like though which side is the most malevolent is debatable.
Invertia is said to be ‘A mirror displaying some of the darkest paradoxes and truly terrifying segments of American society’, and as soon as 
opener The Sidewinding immerses the senses and thoughts in its thick body of intent with excellent samples littering the oppressive scenery, you understand its meaning. The track almost ambles in but with an intimidation and haunted feel wrapping the coaxing guitars. It borders on invitational until the first sampled vocal stab opens the lock for a charging enticement of twistingly nagging riffs entwined with a serpentine groove and understated yet punishing rhythms. The heavy rasping tones of Coppola alongside the interjections of hellish samples only accentuate the intensive danger and malice of the proposition, the emerging blackened rabidity abrasing with weight and acidic ferocity. The track is a magnetic suffocation of light and emotional escape, a drop through demonic realms with a diversely flavoured and feverishly impacting soundscape leaving thoughts resonating and senses exhausted.
Whereas the first track thrust the listener into the blackest grip within seconds, the following Cross-Eyed Christ engulfs ears in a Ministry like predation, short grooves and scourging riffs entrancing before the heavy shadows and vocal rancor takes hold. Samples again punctuate lyrical and sonic declarations whilst the guitars scythe the air with irresistible swipes, a combination with the leviathan groove which steals away the distraction of anything outside of the song. Brutal yet impossible infectious the track continues the immense start before making way for the toxic erosion Void of Community. Its climate and touch is poisonous though like its predecessor its initial incitement is pure contagion. This lure never relinquishes its hold across the encounter but is soon tempered by the caustic vocal squalls and barbarous drumming for another blistering tempest of harsh extremes and conflicting yet united textures. The album is one which needs time to blossom in the passions, each venture a greater persuasion and success as evidenced by this track, its first touch agreeable and its sixth and counting viciously bewitching.
Both Hourglass Without Sand and They’re Everywhere continue the slavery of thoughts and passions, the first as the previous song a rampaging incessantly catchy torrent of abrasing riffs, merciless and varied rhythmic confrontation, and devilish hooks. A shift in weight and gait into a lumbering tsunami of intensity and drama provides further proof of the inventive twists and imagination to the album which its successor takes further and into a truly destructive and malignant landscape. Vocal winds smother the senses like a sandstorm whilst the blackened niggle of the guitars simply grazes and scars with every vitriolic note unleashed, matched by the scourge of vocal animosity. It is an evil conclusion to the first part of the album, and an irresistibly enthralling if scary one.
The five tracks are next presented again with remixes from notable artists within the Ohm Resistance camp and more. Remixes never sit easily with us as regular readers will realise and the quintet here provides a confirmation of our doubts and equally at times a reasoning to embrace them. The Justin K. Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu) take on The Sidewinding, pushing it deeply into the suffocation lying within the original. It thickens and slows the flight of the track unveiling the intensive blackness within. It works well as a companion to and inverted insight of the song but fails to come near to the grip of its founder though it does spark the imagination just as powerfully.
The End.user (The Blood Of Heroes) version of Cross-Eyed Christ tantalises and teases with all of the lures of Invertia’s version, cleaning up the industrial and metallic parts of the song but entwining them with an electro bred matching virulence. It is an invigorating success matched fully by the Submerged (Method Of Definance, The Blood Of Heroes) remix of Hourglass Without Sand which comes after the smothering jaundiced take of Void of Community by TranZi3nt. Both tracks appeal in varying degrees but the unrelenting ebm spawned Hourglass Without Sand is just breath-taking.
The release is completed by the R3TRD look at They’re Everywhere, a track bringing in samples of ‘a Pentecostal preacher vampirishly admonishing children to visit with him as he speaks in tongues’ to create a version which strikes further chills into the already fearsome throat of the song. It is a powerful end to an impressive release which by just talking the first half of its spiteful endeavour is an exhilarating and almost demoralising treat. The remixes depending on your take add more weight to the proposition but it is Invertia’s own tracks which make this an unmissable injection into extreme music.
For the first five tracks 9/10
As a whole 8/10
RingMaster 04/2014
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