Cephalic Carnage is set to unleash its latest collection of extreme metal upon an unsuspecting world. For this listener it is a first experience, and let me say that Xenosapien floored me.
It is an insanely brutal, technically precise, experiment in extreme death metal. Once again, the labels trip me up and I am unsure what subgenre(s) this belongs to, so I make my best guess, making some up along the way, and hope it works towards relaying what it is that is rattling around inside my head. I was unsure what to expect, though the word "carnage" led me to believe it would be brutal. What I got was brutal, but it was also so much more than that.
The first thing I had to figure out is what is meant by Cephalic Carnage? Beyond how I am supposed to pronounce that word. I soon discovered that cephalic means "of or pertaining to the head." So, I can extrapolate the name means something along the lines of "slaughtering the head." Now it makes perfect sense. It is a good way to describe the aural assault that they led on my ear drums.
The second thing I had to figure out is why have I never heard of them before? Sure, there are a lot of good bands that I would probably love that I have never heard, and likely never will. You know, there is only so much time that I can allot to my forays into the musical world. I will just have to be thankful for the ones that do make it to the area of my ears. Honestly though, I am surprised no one mentioned these guys to me before, I mean they do already have three albums out on Relapse in the past 6-7 years, and they have toured with a number of bands I like, including Shadows Fall and Mastodon. Whatever, they are here now, and they are an impressive quintet.
Article comments
1 - robzilla
dude if you like this album, then check out their album anomalies. it is even more impressive and has a wonderful joke metalcore song called dying will be the best of me, which is better than 95% of the metalcore bands out there trying hard to be heavy and brutal. and that coming from someone who enjoys quit a bit of metalcore.
2 - Cephalic devotee
To answer a couple of questions raised by the reviewer, the name Cephalic Carnage refers to the effects of exceptionally strong Rocky Mountain-grown mary jane. Accordingly, Rocky Mountain HydroGrind refers to the fact that CC's music is heavily influenced by said hydroponically-grown mary jane. The band is known for partakinig as often as possible. Hope this helps.
Cephalic fanatic in Denver