I remember the first time I threw this slab of deathcore chaos on. It was stupid late—like 2:30 a.m.—headphones on, lights off, the kind of hour where your judgment is already questionable. I hit play expecting heavy. What I got instead felt like being shoved into a centrifuge of blast beats. Within thirty seconds I actually laughed. Not because it was funny—well, maybe a little—but because it was so much. That’s kind of the entry point for Infant Annihilator: overwhelm first, comprehension later… if ever.

You’ve got Aaron Kitcher hammering out rhythms that feel less “played” and more rendered, Eddie Pickard stacking riffs like he’s trying to break the concept of time signatures, and then Dickie Allen—man, Allen doesn’t just perform vocals here, he demonizes them. It’s not singing, not screaming… it’s like someone fed a devil a distortion pedal and told it to go wild.

And the weird part? Underneath all that chaos, there’s precision. Cold, calculated, almost smug precision. Like they know exactly how far they’re pushing it—and they’re enjoying it.

Now the title—The Battle of Yaldabaoth. That’s a deep cut if you’re not already down the rabbit hole. Comes from Yaldabaoth in Gnosticism—a false god, basically. A creator that thinks it’s the top of the food chain but is actually flawed, incomplete, kind of monstrous . . . and, yes, this album sounds like a corrupted act of creation. Overbuilt. Excessive. A god screaming into the void and convincing itself it’s profound.

Tracks like “Three Bastards” almost trick you. There’s a groove in there—brief, fleeting, like catching your breath mid-sprint—before it collapses back into pure chaos. “Swinaecologist” shouldn’t work. The name alone sounds like a joke you’d regret texting. But structurally? It sticks. Somehow. “Childchewer” is just… relentless. No intro, no mercy, no exit ramp. And then “Ov Sacrament and Sincest”—that’s where Allen really goes off, layering vocals in a way that feels less like performance and more like possession. I remember replaying that track just to figure out what I was even hearing. Still not entirely sure I have an answer.

But here’s the thing—and this might be the controversial part—I don’t always enjoy this album. I respect it. A lot. I come back to it in bursts, like testing my tolerance. But it’s exhausting. There’s no real sense of restraint, no dynamic relief, no moment where it just lets you exist with it. It's a confrontation, start to finish. And the lyrics? Yeah… they’re a wall for a lot of people. Intentionally grotesque, deliberately offensive, pushed so far they almost become abstract. I’ve had friends tap out within a minute. Can’t even blame them.

And yet, there are moments. A lot of moments of flashes where everything aligns—the speed, the absurdity, the sheer commitment—and it just works. This entire album is something completely unhinged.  But it is the methodology of madness which keeps bringing you back.

The Battle of Yaldabaoth is not a casual recommendation. It’s not background music. It’s not even everyday listening. It’s an experience you drop into when you’re in the right headspace—or the wrong one. Depends how you look at it. Either way, it’s a grotesque, over-engineered monument to excess.

And somehow… it sticks with you.