Florida’s Impurity are back with their third recording, and first full length offering, Of Lust And War. Impurity features Teufel’s Tomb alumni Damian Scott and those familiar with his reviews should have a good sense of the type of material he likes and the type of material a band he’d be in would play. If you haven’t, then I’ll just tell you that Impurity play mystical darkened death metal heavily influenced by the likes of Immolation, Incantation, Nile and Malevolent Creation.

The music is filled with many Nile-like Persian/Egyptian melodies with a straightforward sound similar to fellow Floridians Malevolent Creation with the occasional Immolation-styled riff thrown in for good measure. After hearing the band’s 2003 mCD offering Unearthly Affinity I had really high hopes for Of Lust Of War, but like all Florida-based death metal acts the band was subject to numerous line-up changes and the group nearly split at one point leaving Damian Scott as the only returning member from the band’s last recording. The end result is a much different Impurity than before.

The musicians Damian has surrounded himself are extremely capable, which is no surprise considering Florida is a hotbed for great technical death metal guitarists, drummers and bassists. Unfortunately, the material itself, much like Malevolent Creation’s recent discography, is hit or miss. Some tracks like the title track, "Demon’s Harvest" and "The Algid Heath" have very memorable moments, but the majority, while technically impressive, fail to stand out and come up short. In short, it sounds a lot like a typical Florida death metal album.

By no means is Of Lust And War bad, it just suffers from one too many line-up shuffles and it sounds like the band is trying to rebuild from scratch and comes up a little short. There’s enough good material here to make the album interesting, but not enough to make it a must buy, but it’s still worth checking out if you’re a fan of dark death metal. At the very least you should hit their MySpace page and check out a few sample tracks.

Written By: Teufel