Review: Immolation – Descent

April 9, 2026

An everlasting fire that stays alive

Throughout their 37-year career, Immolation has been one of the most consistent and criminally underrated death metal bands in the genre. You can go through their entire discography and you’ll have a great time; even if they’ve had their weaker moments in a certain era, they’ve never released something outright bad which other bands of their calibre can’t say about their long careers. They’re also the pioneers for delivering the perfect cavernous and dissonant death metal sound that has inspired future bands in the genre such as Dead Congregation and Cruciamentum. After the really impressive Acts of God from 2022, Immolation are now on their 12th album in Descent.

Descent opens in glorious fashion with “These Vengeful Winds,” storming out of the gate with a really good mixture of groove and aggression. It shows that Immolation’s signature sound never gets old even after 12 albums. Guitarist Robert Vigna really knows how to produce variety while delivering sick riffs as shown in the next track “The Ephemeral Curse.” I also really enjoy it when he goes all out on the guitar solos; he’s always created a wild and off-kilter feel with them. In addition, the track also shows off some great drumming. “God’s Last Breath” really portrays the sense of doom and gloom brilliantly with its riffs. Ross Dolan’s vocals also add to it with how good his lower range is and how evil it feel. “Adversary” is completely ferocious and I love how impressive the riffs are all around. There’s another excellent guitar solo that feels infectious in how it keeps hooking you into the song.

The next track, “Attrition” is more groove-focused than the preceding songs but it’s still able to hold listeners’ attention; the way the band changes things up throughout their songs is one of their strongest abilities that other bands in the genre could stand to learn from. Following this is a full throttle storm in “Bend Towards the Dark,” one of their faster tracks on the album. Drummer Steve Shalaty shows off once again during “Host” with another strong showing of his drumming ability adding greatly to the band’s signature sound. I like how the guitars are again on full display here, another signature strength showing how consistently good Immolation’s music has been throughout their well-defined history.

“False Ascent” blazes in its pacing; I like how Ross Dolan sounds like a powerhouse in this song with his deep ferocity making for one of my favorite tracks on this album. Before the last track, there’s a three minute interlude in “Banished;” it doesn’t feel necessary to have an interlude of that length but it does fit for building up to the final track. The album finishes off in a brutally triumphant way with the closing title track, “Descent.” This is a great crescendo where the guitars go wild for the last time as well as the aggression being turned up even more, showing how intense they can be and it doesn’t feel tiresome.

After how great their last album Acts of God was, they had a really high bar to reach with this follow-up but they succeeded in hitting that bar again. Descent is another high mark in Immolation’s history that puts a lot of death metal bands—old or new—to shame. From the blissful guitars in their riffs and solos to the brilliant drumming intensity and the gnarly deep vocals, Immolation really knows to produce the feeling of dismal gloom, pessimism and darkness in their music. It goes to show how much we really need to appreciate this band that just keeps producing strong records without losing their spark. I wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up being a top death metal album of the year for me.