I know exactly what you’re thinking, you brutal metal freaks out there. What the heck should you expect from the inaugural post by Cannibal Cory? Well I’m here to firstly warn those weak of heart and easily disturbed to look elsewhere. The following just might, maybe, cause a heart attack – especially if the idea of gore like Scattered Remains, Splattered Brains makes you want to heave your ripening meal all over the keyboard.
To start, I’ve thoroughly been enjoying waking up to the sound of Arkaik’s debut album “Reflections Within Dissonance.” Let me be the first to tell you that there’s nothing quite like waking up headbanging, pumped with fresh glass scraping my inner eardrum. I’m not a man of genres – in this day and age it can mean a gruesome, bloody death (preferably by Beheading and Burning, but fingernail removal is fine too) – so know that the bloodier my descriptions are, the higher the recommendation is.
The title track Reflections Within Dissonance definitely rips your intestines out via bellybutton by sheer force once it lulls you into a false sense of “I’m only gonna lose a leg listening to this one.” They keep grinding at your teeth with a sander up until about halfway, when they break it all down and cause your gums to bleed. In fact, they manage to do a great job of balancing shredding your arms with a cheese grater and shattering your ears with an icepick and technicality all the way to the end.
Another one of my personal favorites, Obscured Luminosity, keeps things more in the technical realm compared to other songs, meaning each brutal stroke of the guitar and pounding of the bass pedal is like a sledgehammer to a kneecap. When it does get brutal, they’re merely taking a table saw to your jaw. The ultimate climax comes when the bassist decides that the table saw isn’t enough and rips a short – but eyeball popping – solo. After that, you’ll never look at the album in the same way again.
Then there’s Elegy for the Disillusioned, where you feel like there’s wave after wave of sewing needles being shot at your face. They keep the thrashing and breakdowns transitioning so rapidly smooth you won’t even notice you’re being swept away by a tidal wave made of acid – be sure to hang on to your skin.
There you have it – it’s up to you to decide whether you can go without a couple spare limbs for a while. Overall, the album gets a gore cleanup rating of an hour and a half in my book. Still a couple of stains that won’t come out of the carpet, but I don’t mind the maggots.
Now, for the question of the week: “If you could go to any concert, and could time travel, what would it be?” Three people replied with their responses:
“Dude, if I could time travel I’d go to the future and watch Dethklok destroy everything!" – DJ Nick
"I’d have Overkill and Kreator start the concert, then have Motörhead and Manowar. Even though it’s pretty much impossible.” – Metal Commander
“If I could choose… it would be Nile.” – 9th Priest
There you have it, cannibals. Check out the next show to hear the question of the week, and come back to read a review of Borknagar’s “Universal”. You might even get lucky and see pictures of the Cannibal Corpse concert at Volume 11! To end on a lighter note, I leave you with this: