I've never been a huge Cephalic Carnage fan, but I do like them, and I've followed them over the years, so overall I'm pretty pleased with this record.? The monumentally awesome "Halls of Amenti" EP is difficult (if not impossible) to top, and I'm not sure I'd ever find 45 minutes of Cephalic Carnage to be as powerful as that single 20-minute epic, but as usual there's a lot of variety happening here to keep things interesting.? A part of that is of course the vocal performance, which is all over the place from shouts and yells and snarling screams to all manners of gurgling growls and grunts, as well as a shitload of guest appearances from Barney Greenway (Napalm Death), Corporate Death (Macabre), Travis Ryan (Cattle Decapitation), Brian Hegman (Black Lamb), and more.? The first major standout is the fuzzed out stoner rock mastery of "Piecemaker", proving to me that without a doubt these guys are shitloads better at playing slow than they are at playing fast.? Or at least, their songwriting excels when they slow it down and start kicking ass rather than blazing a trail of hyper schizophrenic death/grind.? Don't get me wrong, they're solid at that stuff too, but god damn, when you can drop bombs like this, why bother with the other stuff!?? "Sleeprace" is in that same general style, just a little heavier and with some speedy contrasts, and is another forceful offering towards the latter chunk of the disc.? 10-minute closer "Ontogeny of Behavior" opens with sparse clean guitars and pitch-shifted spoken vocals with smoother basslines and a generally thicker sound - drums and all.? This approach builds up over the course of several minutes before some distant singing vocals seep in just prior to distortion kicking in and cranking things up to a fuckin' slick midpaced and dissonant stroll that later delves into thrashier territory and more technical alternate picking runs and whatnot. Elsewhere, "Counting the Days" is more of a death metal oriented track and lets some killer midpaced riffing have more space, notably around two minutes in when things really start to get into it, but rest assured there's plenty of speed and a few frantic changeups present as well. "Kill for Weed" keeps it short and plods away with some groovy death metal meets absolutely classic grindcore via crossover thrash. I'm not sure what the deal is with "Dying Will be the Death of Me", what with its generic Swedish riffing, dissonant metalcore nonsense, and brief singing vocals, but I can't help but assume that it's some sort of joke since it does basically sound like third-rate metalcore regardless of the actual source... I mean, those solos are fucking painful. Also losing me are all of the noodly lead runs and caustic flurries in the subsequent "Inside is Out", which also sounds like lame metalcore to me and only redeems itself when it slows down and lets the heaviness flow (Or when they briefly mimic Candiria almost precisely - another potential joke?). And yeah, there are a number of tracks more akin to the "Rocky Mountain hydro-grind" for which Cephalic Carnage has become known, which should please some listeners, but that kind of stuff wears thin on me after awhile and doesn't catch my attention as much - though admittedly songs like "Scientific Remote Viewing" and "Litany of Failure" are extremely solid for what they offer. The recording's nice and crisp and I enjoy the clarity of the mix, but there's still room for improvement. I love the bass tone and think its faintly distorted edge gives it a nice bite, and the clarity of the percussion helps accentuate a slick drum performance (as always), but overall the rhythm section feels a tad flat. The drums could definitely use a little more oomph (the cymbals sound killer but the snare lacks resonance and such), whereas the bass maybe just needs to be a little louder to help fill in the gaps between the guitars. The guitar tone has a subtle dirtiness to it that can make some of the faster riffing sound barely choppy, but in the long run it helps with the general clarity and works out pretty well. For the most part things definitely sound strong, it's just that a smidge more low-end or something could help beef things up. Visually this is by far the best layout the band has ever had, with the visuals taking the path of rather bleak and consistently twisted collages of imagery that's all a little darker and more cohesive (if not mature) than their past efforts, and much of it looks really damn cool. Also a little stronger than past efforts are the lyrics (sans the rather silly "Kill for Weed", along with one or two others), which tend to kind of come off like stream of consciousness narratives or something: "Forgive me for I have acted against my own blood. I never meant for all of it to happen this way. A man makes his choice, god willing, to live with his shame. I have so much love for you. I knew I'd die today." Not bad. There are some weak moments, and I'm not totally clear on what the deal is with some of those tracks in the middle of the disc, but the keepers save the day. Seriously, maybe all the weed has damaged these guys to the point where they can't clearly recognize the fact that they're 10 times more powerful when they play slow, but I can't help but imagine how incredible they'd be if 75% of their material was more midpaced and dingy. Just taking the three main slower (and best) songs herein - "Piecemaker", "Sleeprace", and "Ontogeny of Behavior" - there's still a wealth of diversity there, so it's not like they'd be sacrificing all that much. I don't know, fuck it, the album title's as fitting as ever for this one. I'm just sayin', man... when these cats ease up on the gas they really start pounding away.
[Relapse]
Running time - 45:39, Tracks: 12
[Notable tracks: Counting the Days, Piecemaker, Sleeprace, Ontogeny of Behavior]
Relapse Records - http://www.relapse.com
