Bob Vigna on Descent, dissonance, and the weight of the last record
Full interview at end of article.
There’s heavy… and then there’s Immolation.
Not just noise. Not just speed. Something colder. Something that sits wrong in your chest and refuses to leave.
And the strangest part?
It’s not even deliberate.
Talking with Robert Vigna ahead of Descent, there’s no grand plan to sound darker, more evil, more extreme. No calculated push into chaos.
He just follows what feels interesting.
The riffs twist that way on their own.
There’s a tension in how Immolation write—two guitars pulling against each other, not locking in, but stretching the space between notes until it feels unstable. Alive.
Melody doesn’t soften it. It sharpens it.
And while everything around them gets faster, more technical, more crowded… they pull back.
Simpler.
Heavier.
More direct.
“I get more out of the simpler stuff.”
Even the process has evolved—from piecing songs together over the phone, holding entire structures in memory, to shaping them now with modern tools like Ableton Live.
But the mindset hasn’t changed.
No stockpiles of riffs. No safety net.
If it doesn’t fit, it’s gone.
Always forward.
Because after decades of doing this, there’s still no comfort in legacy.
No coasting.
No looking back.
“You’re only as good as your last record.”
Descent doesn’t feel like a milestone.
It feels like another step down.
Descent drops April 10 via Nuclear Blast.
This is the gospel.
I bite crowd surfers.
Killer.
