The album was released in 1988 by Brutal Records. Serpent Temptation is the debut full-length studio album by US death/ thrash act Incubus. I´ll raise that to a 3 star rating for the re-release version. I gave the original version a 2.5 rating. On the other hand, there are some releases that actually gets better with re-recorded changes and the 1996 version of Serpent Temptation is certainly one of those. Personally I think re-releases with re-recorded changes are seldom good ideas, mostly because I think original recordings ( for better or worse) should be left untouched.

The drums could have prospered greatly from a re-recording. It´s a bit of a shame Incubus didn´t opt to re-record some of the instrumental parts too. The re-recorded vocals are a great improvement over the weak vocals on the original version and drag the album even more into a death metal direction. Nothing in the music besides the vocals have been changed ( well some of the lyrics too, but the instrumental part of the album is untouched), so the music style on the album is still old school thrash metal with death metal influences. The 1996 version of Serpent Temptation is not just a re-release though as the album features re-recorded vocal tracks, revised lyrics and new cover artwork. The re-release version was released in 1996 by Radiation Records/ Nuclear Blast Records. Serpent Temptation (1996 version) is a re-release of the US death/ thrash act Incubus debut full-length studio album from 1988. This might be a flawed release, but it´s still greatly enjoyable. So it should speak volumes about the quality of the great things on the album, that I still rate 'Beyond the Unknown' with a 3.5 star (70%) rating. Howard doesn´t speak English that well and the fact that he often stumbles over the words because the lyrics are too long for the vocal lines are also issues that drag my rating down a bit. The fact that the pronounciation of some of the words in the tracks sound like Francis M. It´s not all great though and some shifts between sections don´t flow as well as they could have, and as mentioned the playing isn´t always as tight as it could have been either.

The 8 tracks on the 38:52 minutes long album are generally of a good quality and tracks like 'Massacre of the Unborn', 'Certain Accuracy' and especially 'Curs of the Damned Cities' even touch excellent territory. Howard has a powerful raw and fiercely aggressive vocal delivery, which is one of the greatest assets of the album. There are both fast paced thrashy riffing and heavier riff sections in the music as well as several screaming guitar solos. The playing is organic and not always perfect, but charming nonetheless. The music on the album is aggressive death/thrash metal not completely unlike the music style on 'Beneath the Remains (1989)' by Sepultura and maybe with a few nods towards mid- to late eighties Slayer. Their debut full-length studio album 'Serpent Temptation (1988)' didn´t provide the band with much success or recognition, but 'Beyond the Unknown' changed that and put Incubus firmly on the death/thrash metal map. The band never achieved the kind of success under their new monicker as they had while they were called Incubus, and they´ve sort of disappeared since then, so it´s not necessarily known by fans of the genre how huge a release 'Beyond the Unknown' actually was back in 1990. In 1999 the band were forced to change their name to Opprobrium because of the California-based alternative rock band, who held the rights to the Incubus monicker. Howard (vocals, bass, guitars), at Morrisound Recordings in Tampa, Florida in June 1990. All instruments and vocals were recorded by the Howard brothers, Moyes M. The album was released through Nuclear Blast Records in 1990. 'Beyond the Unknown' is the 2nd full-length studio album by US death/thrash metal act Incubus.

Incubus band albums