Cephalic Carnage
Lucid Interval
Relapse
Cephalic Carnage is a band that can rock out. At times, they sludge along with thick, monstrous riffs that seep like tar. Other times, they beat the listener into submission with crushing blast beat and furious chugga chugga riffs. They grind away on thrash riffs, pummeling a single melody into what would seem to be overkill… but it isn’t. They bust out weird jazzed up math melodies as the drummer freaks out with lightning fast beats. This band can pretty do anything that’s evil, and they do it so well on Lucid Interval.
What’s really crazy is the way in which these guys switch from doom/sludge to superfast, and it doesn’t sound the least bit awkward. On “Anthro Emesis,” they start out scraping along at a snail’s pace, only to rip things open with a fury of blast beats and insane Slayer-esque melodies, played about 50 times faster than anything those guys have ever done … and this is one of the more tame songs on the album. On just about any given song, you can find ridiculously fast, jazz influenced melodies with drumming that sounds inhuman, giving way to weird starts and stops layered with feedback and other curiosities. The vocalist is one of the better growlers around, and he seems to know his place in Cephalic Carnage: his vocals are somewhat buried, and the guitars and drums take the forefront. He’s a team player and we have to love him for that.
Simply put, this is not something that many people outside of the metal world will be able to handle. It’s experimental, bizarre, devastating, loud and completely unforgiving. I’m guessing that fans of grind, black metal, death metal, thrash metal, prog and just about any other metal sub-genre will eat this record up. Being a musician and playing music this technical and intricate seems incomprehensible, but the guys in Cephalic Carnage are quite incredible, and Lucid Intervals is a testament to the fact that metal has no limits.
Relapse Records: http://www.relapse.com/
