I'm going to say this up front: I like Vincent Locke's artwork, I like that the band is high on consistency, but would it kill Cannibal Corpse to explore some other color palettes once in awhile? It's not that the cover to Chaos Horrific is bad or unfitting whatsoever, but considering how the band is often criticized for some of the sameness of their death metal material, it might help a fraction to vary up the packaging. Other than that, though, I have few if any complaints about their 16th studio album, because their sound is not one I grow that weary of, and while it's got a lot of the predictable, hammering, gory elements, you can hear them occasionally trying to throw a few new hooks or patterns at you when they can spare the expansion. That said, if you're not a fan of the George Corpsegrinder era of the band, now the default at nearly three decades, if you're pining for those simpler times of the early 90s, Chaos Horrific is not going to change your mind.
This is the battering, clinical, darkly brutal death metal they've been releasing since Vile with few if many alterations other than who is in the lineup, what they can offer, and minor differences in production. I for one prefer this flurried, semi-technical style and I'm constantly exploring the substrate of gore for all the tasty, meaty little hooks, but there's no question that you could mix up a bunch of tracks off the last ten albums on a playlist and perhaps forget which album they came from beyond a few standouts. All of these tunes are almost obnoxiously consistent, packed with agile little palm-muted chops and evil tremolo picked rhythms that alternate against groovier, weighted hooks like those that set up "Blood Blind" and its roiling horror show. One thing that's great about Cannibal Corpse, you can almost always discern the thrash roots and propulsion through their material, where other bands in the more cavernous style seem to have distanced themselves more from those fundamentals, this feels like that genre armored up with more oozing entrails and a growling animal and set to non-stop headbanging. If only all our necks could endure this as much as George's can!
I wouldn't mind more leads to whirlwind about here, but with Erik Rutan in the fold, you know where they do appear they're going to kick ass, and they do, like the eerie harmonies and exchanges in the center of "Fracture and Refracture". Alex and Paul still mete out the rhythmic bottom end like players 20 years their junior, and Rob and Erik load every song up with too many chops to ever bore from, even if there is that slight monotonous sense that they're largely small alterations on past progressions. The album is totally ferocious, even where it breaks to let a guitar thrash out or slows into a cyclopean but loaded groove, there is no place for your heart to rest, you are going to be splattered for 40 minutes and you'd best be ready. Rutan's production is quite in line with other recent efforts, and there's no point at which my attention wavered when I was truly in the mood for this style. Favorites include "Pestilential Rictus" for its infectious death/thrashing opening and groovy verse, or the finale "Drain You Empty" for that cool atmospheric intro, but the whole thing smokes just as hard as a lot of their other output from the 2010s and beyond.
Is there still some fleshy masterpiece waiting on the slab, ready for carving? I think the band would have to endure a forced evolution into a more widely-written album, or perhaps a de-evolution to super catchy, simpler tunes with the same charm, but at this point, even if they make another half dozen LPs of this general pace, punishment and quality I'll be supplied with enough bruisings to last me the rest of my days. Nothing broken (except your bones), nothing to fix.
Verdict: Win [8/10]
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