Carnifex - Necromanteum (2023)

I dropped off the Carnifex train roughly a decade ago. Not that I was ever a paying passenger, but I had followed the Californians along to experience their evolution as one of the cornerstones of US deathcore. Much to my chagrin, since I despised most of the material they put out in their earlier years, an example of vapid, mosh-over-metal which I simply don't ever jive with. But once they arrived at 2011's Until I Feel Nothing, I felt there were some seismic shifts in the songwriting, an advance in musicality, and that the band might develop into a more memorable entity through trial and perseverance. I didn't care much for the follow-up Die Without Hope, and did listen once through Slow Death, mostly attracted to the creepy cover artwork. I remember that one had dabbled in this symphonic-tinted style, but not much else about it, so I went into torpor over the rest of their catalogue...until now. Call me a sucker for a cool cover, but the sepulchral massive gates, gravestones, and green mist of Necromanteum called out to me. It looks a WHOLE lot like it should be on a Black Dahlia Murder album, but I figured I'd check it out and see if this band had actually managed to incorporate even more creepy atmosphere or horror theatrics until their chug-first, ask-questions-later style.

And I'd say they have done just that, with the implementation of some orchestration that gave me vibes of other bands like Winds of Plague, or the lesser known, excellent Lorelei, or perhaps if we're going a bit more brutal, Italy's Fleshgod Apocalypse. I'll go even one further, and say that Carnifex doesn't merely add these elements, but they do so tastefully. Spectral strings or eerie sounds will break out over some bludgeoning blast beat rhythm, or a swell of a more complete symphony might lurk around a double-bass break. It's almost as if Carnifex have implemented these much like some older bands used industrial sounds, purely as a complementary aesthetic and not to drown out or distract what their core audience comes to them for. There are a few points where an added instrument can sound a little out of place or obnoxious, but I think of it from a horror perspective, it still works well within the concept, and there are some great breaks like the end of the title track where the little choir loop rings out and it's pretty awesome. I can't qualify that this is new ground for them, but it's all a huge plus.

What's even more important, is that the central music of the band itself has dramatically improved. It's still deathcore, but there are lot more melodic death metal ingredients which recall the direction of At the Gates at they gained in popularity, and then further extracted by the Black Dahlia Murder who I just mentioned. Hell, there are moments in tracks like "Crowned in Everblack" where you can almost discern a Swedish melodic black metal influence, often pretty derivative in structure, and predictable in pattern, but when fired up as just another weapon in an arsenal that includes blasting, hammering, grooving, and atmospherics, it adds a lot to what is already a loaded sound. The instruments here are technical marvels, from the dizzying drums of Shawn Cameron to the rhythms and leads of Cory Arford and Neal Tiemann. Anything you'd want out of your modern, polished extreme metal (think current Cattle Decapitation), these guys can mete out effortlessly, if not innovatively.

The vocals are still a slight sore spot with me, not because they are bad, but they're just the typical range of gutturals and snarls you'd expect from others in this niche, including those I've mentioned, but it's not that they are bad...they are professionally executed to a fault, it's simply that they never establish any unique identify for the band. However, I could say this about a lot of death metal or deathcore acts, and they function well enough. I noticed that a few of the tunes here seemed to be playing around with a little more of a progressive structure between the walls of chugging, for example "The Pathless Forest", and I think this is a good direction for Carnifex to explore, as they already have a lot of the moshing crowd pleasers to fall back on in their back catalogue. This album was a really nice surprise, and I was happy to actually buy a copy (for the first time), to eat some serious crow, and put it on the shelf next to my Lorna Shore, Fit for an Autopsy, and whatever scant few albums like this I actually have in the collection. In fact I'll probably backtrack and check out the few before this to hear what I might have been missing. 

Verdict: Win [8/10]

http://www.carnifexmetal.com/