reviews_CarnifexHCM

Carnifex - Hell Chose Me

Hell Chose Me

If you want ugly then look no further, for they don't come much nastier thanHell Chose Me. On their third full-length, San Diego's Carnifex are clearly out to wreak maximum damage on anyone within earshot of their furious assault, bluntly demonstrating that there's a hell of a lot more death than 'core in their art. Wasting no time in laying out their battle plan, they kick things off with the breathless title track, which seems to explode at you from every conceivable angle, and from there on out they allow you no avenue of escape. While they lovingly embrace the visceral power of blastbeats, there is never the sense that they are being fast for the sake of it, and when they deign to take their foot off the gas it's to bludgeon you senseless with utterly gigantic grooves. "Entombed Monarch", "Names Mean Nothing" and "The Liar's Funeral" provide perfect examples of this, the frenzied sections sandpapering your ear canals to a bloody pulp while the devastatingly thick midtempo riffs will have you checking your house for damage to the foundations.



The only (brief) moments in which this violence lets up are found in the brooding opening bars of "Heartless," which drags itself from the grave on a dark acoustic arpeggio (before attempting to remove your face from your head), and the similarly ominous outro to closer "Genocide Initiative." These passages serve to emphasize the imposing epic quality of the whole thing, and they add to the already impressive command of dynamics on display, which also benefits from the broad range of inhuman shrieks, grunts and barks torn from the larynx of vocalist Scott Lewis. It is, in fact, this command of dynamics fused to the unflinching hostility of the whole thing that makes the record so vital. In this, the band not only ably avoid falling into the common trap of being so relentless as to grow tedious, but they also throw down a gauntlet to both their forebears and the plethora of bands currently trying to shoehorn themselves into the genre, demanding they seriously step things up if they want to maintain any sense of relevance.

Victory http://www.victoryrecords.com

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