Were it not for the fact that this band is incredibly immature, they wouldn't be all that bad. This incredibly brief EP runs about 14 minutes and includes nine tracks of fast death/grind that's heavy on the speed and tries to be mildly technical, but the performances are too sloppy for them to pull it off. It's nothing new, it sounds like most every other band playing this style: Low growls, high screams, churning death metal runs, flurries of notes, time changes and stuttered rhythms, etc. But this is one of those rare cases where the songs are so short that they don't go anywhere. They cram a ton of riffs into a minute or two and then just stop, without really developing any of the parts or putting real effort into the songwriting. The recording's tolerable. It sounds like a really good demo, but the guitar tone is pretty flimsy, and that hurts. I like the well defined bass tone (and admittedly the bassist is actually quite good), I don't mind the drums, and the vocals sound okay, but they need to beef up the guitars and clean up the mixing job. I've heard worse. Visually this thing reeks of a fairly young band with little originality, as the cover art is fairly cheesy (a weak illustration of some sort of "demonic underworld" scene beneath a dismal cityscape), the album title speaks for itself, and they actually used the "bloody letters" font. They actually use like five or six different fonts, and the only one that works is the crisp, simple font used for the lyrics, granted the lyrics are crap, so... All you need are lines like, "Frantically consuming the feces," or "Rectum bloodied, wasted and tattered," to know that this is juvenile mess. If these guys continue down this path, the bassist should quit and join a real band. Otherwise, Ciribus needs to drop the elementary school bullshit as far as lyrics, artwork, and attitude, and work on tightening up their performance, focusing on writing coherent songs that build up from their stronger riffs. This isn't as awful as I thought it was going to be, there are competent qualities on this disc, but they band needs a whole lot of work to make that potential mean something.
[Zombieflesh]
Running time - 13:44, Tracks: 9
[Notable tracks: they have some good riffs, but none of the songs stick out]
Ciribus - http://www.sagenet.info/ciribus/
