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/

Carnifex - Die Without Hope (2014)

Often, when I think of the deathcore scene as a whole, I imagine a group of guys walking around in the dark with their dicks in their hands. 'Will you suck it?' 'No, suck MINE.' The music is just that much of a primal biological impulse programmed into its creators, who often seem unable to separate themselves from the many years of chugging metalcore and djent mandates that predate them. The artistic merits of a Terrance and Philip skit. Bad music is the new good music! Does that make all the records in the style reproachable? Absolutely not...if they can put the notes together correctly, and summon up just enough variation and musicality, they have and will write some truly entertaining shit, in particular the atmospheric or symphonic suburbs sprawling off to the left of Beatdown Avenue. Conversely, this will draw the resentment of a small minority who prefer the niche at its most '13-year-old caveman-cumming-of-age' with copy/pasted slam sequences and whiny lyrics of heartbroken angst informed by whatever Pantera, Killswitch Engage, Slipknot, Converge or Slayer records they happen to own. Angels falling, wings ripped. Hands bleeding. Men clutching themselves in corners, unable to rise above their emotional agony. Girls are, like, NAZIS! I'm totally gonna fuck up this gym locker!

At any rate, Californians Carnifex were really starting to metamorphose from such a cocoon. It's been a long time coming, and goddamn did this group suck to begin with, but steadily they have ascended into something resembling a band which releases albums that I don't instantly want to remove from my CD player, peaking with 2011's Until I Feel Nothing, an album that many diehard followers of their old stuff disliked, which would seem to yield a default recommendation. So naturally, that disc's successor was the first that I actually found myself anticipating...okay, not really, but Die Without Hope might damn well have proven the first Carnifex album I could define as 'good' with a straight face. Once I saw the cover art, I was even more curious...could they have integrated a little old school death metal into their sound? Sadly, this is actually a step backward from where they are headed, without exactly abandoning the direction of the last 2-3 full-lengths. It's testosterone-charged slammy deathcore with loads of soulless chugging, and the caveat that these guys at least put some effort into their leads, and intto generating a modicum of complexity with the use of more atmospheric or tremolo-picked guitars as an enforcement upon the standardized tropes that plague the album, the sub-genre, and inevitably result in my lack of interest after a number of spins through it. Die Without Hope is certainly no backpedaling to the mid-oughts, and I think these guys clearly continue to imbue the material with their melodeath and modern thrash inspirations, but it's all so painfully average.

What continues to really kill their sound the most is how generic the vocalist is, you could literally transplant a frontman from anywhere else in the medium, and apart from comparing and counting neck and sleeve tats, there would be no difference. Vapid Americore growling and snarling which traces its history all the way back to those earlier Deicide/Carcass as translated through countless grindcore, metalcore and melodic death metal acts hailing from England, Sweden, and Uncle Sam. There is no individuality, no legitimate sense of torment or torture...I really do not feel like I get to know this guy whatsoever, his trials and tribulations, and it really puts a dampener on things. It's not tough sounding, and it's not remotely sinister. BE SINISTER. Come to Satan, my darlings! But, no: overbearing, predictable and boring would be more accurate. There is no technical deficiency...he can bark on tempo and there is real wind coming out of his lungs, but you've just heard it so, so, so many times and its naught more than a superficial brutality in execution. Beyond that, Carnifex are entirely competent, with storming percussion that can easily handle all the standards: double-bass chokepoints, seamless blast beats and simpler, sparser beats to support the swarthy palm-muted grooves. The bass guitar really gets lost for me...I mean, I can hear it but I'd rather the guy perform some more unusual lines that stand out from the chugging rather than support it so closely. A little more depth, richness and complexity to these mosh parts would not be a hindrance.

But I can be thankful that, almost unanimously, the breakdowns are affixed with tinny little melodies or other busy distractions that feel much more fulfilling than had they not been present. They are clearly not afraid to contrast those harsher, caustic bludgeon-fests with some eloquence or grace, and while the melodic bits are vastly outnumbered, the leads are fairly professional and the overall experience of Die Without Hope really relishes in that modernist, 21st century extreme metal sensibility which I'm not at all shy around...I just want the songs to be good. These are largely interchangeable, you could throw half the grooves into the other songs and not notice any difference, so perhaps it suffers from a little too much consistency. Not always a detriment, but here it made the record tiring long before the 38 minutes ground to a halt. The mix of the album is a sure bet for followers of the style...titanic, punchy, and yet not negligent of all the minor details. In other words, the vest metal legions will fucking hate it, but if you're down for what you generally hear from bands like Job for a Cowboy, Whitechapel and this one, then it's to be expected. I mean, as old as I am, and as much as I love old metal, I'm not the typical 'get off my lawn' type. I am down with what the kids are trying; I simply have faith that many of them can do it better. Personally, I just got bored by the modular nature of this music. Carnifex has proficiency locked down, and they deliver some variation and texture to the degree that they seem to think about what they're doing before they record it, but I really wish the songs would just stick more...and please, reach within yourself, and try using a different vocal style for once, even if it's just a fraction removed from what is on this album. With some feeling.

Verdict: Indifference [5/10]

https://www.facebook.com/CarnifexMetal?ref=ts

Carnifex - Until I Feel Nothing (2011)

I'd be lying to claim that California's deathcore tween queens have produced anything besides a glossy, bludgeoning amateur hour to date, and yet their last record Hell Chose Me at least showed some minute traces of promise that the band could write and hold a riff in betwixt their underwhelming tendency to poison compositions with the most crass, formulaic 'been done' crowd pleasing pit chugs on their side of the Mississippi. Once upon a time, when it mattered most, hardcore bands, some of which later evolved into metalcore and then 'deathcore' bands, wrote emotional and important music and the crowd responded with their bodies. A breakdown wasn't just shoved into a song haphazardly, it was fresh and 'felt' by the audience and actually seemed somewhat powerful.

These days, though, it's a marketing commodity. Chug. Groove. Djent. Growl/snarl mechanically, depending on whether you wish to more closely emulate At the Gates, Carcass or both. Get the brosephs in the pit flailing around, and pick up the ladies (or boys) after the gig. I mention both of those bands, because clearly Carnifex derives much of its riffing inspiration, that is to say, the 'good' riffs here, from such sources, and with Until I feel Nothing, I am quite surprised to find that the band have written their strongest material to date, pushing the envelope a bit further than Hell Chose Me. Slaughter of the Soul era melodic death is crossbred with grisly Heartwork-like riffing, then dowsed in the familiar chugging Meshuggah or Earth Crisis breakdowns and then seasoned with a slight influence from more technical Canadian or New York brutal death metal outfits like Suffocation, Beneath the Massacre etc.

And you know something? For about 20 of the 32 minutes on this album, it actually works out rather well. I can't speak much for the vocals, which are the same competent but forgettable array of growls and snarls that sound like 90% of the deathcore or metalcore bands you've seen gigging in the past decade, but there are moments on this album where Carnifex integrates its varied impulses into something nearing bewitchment. Once the boring horror music gone banal grooves of the intro "Deathwish" disappears, we're treated to a pretty decent slew of riffs in "We Spoke of Lies" that will have all the Black Dahlia Murder fans in tears, even if it feels as if there are just a few too many (riffs). Deeper into the track list, "Dehumanize" successfully fuses spikes of melody over their churning, chugging substrate, and the bridge sequences is actually a pretty sweet escape into a melancholic, almost 'trip hop' before exploding back into blasted melodic death with dual tremolos bristling below Scott Lewis' familiar barking.

There are still quite a few dull mosh sequences here, some of which are bouncier akin to the whole 'djent' thing and some being more of a straight old metalcore onslaught, but to their credit they actually make every effort to dress them up as something more than garden variety fist fighting, where in the past they felt far more like they were just being funneled into the music so it would suit their genre and crowd participation. The production here is pretty much what you'd expect for a band on a good sized label, all instruments balanced with precision and only slightly favoring the guitars and vocals. And the members' musicianship has steadily grown in ability, but that was never really an issue for me in the past, the songs were just dull and commonplace. In addition, though the titles and 'personal' lyric matter here are just as uninspiring as on past albums, with the poignancy of a less 'pretty' Avenged Sevenfold, it feels that, at least on a few songs, some effort has been expended in their creation.

I might have been hard on this band's material in the past, as I often am with genre peers like Whitechapel or Job With a Cowboy, but it's only because I want this music to kick my ass and justify its own existence just like any other strain of metal. I would be thrilled to own albums in the deathcore or metalcore genres which bear the same resonance, passion and memorable writing as I've experienced with thrash, hardcore, death, doom or black metal. Until I Feel Nothing is leagues away from such importance, perhaps, and it's not an album I will likely find myself coming back to, since I'm too old for the mosh-first think-later scene and there are only a few tunes here that I'd dub 'catchy' or worth the time to listen through repeatedly. However, that said, I found this an improvement in most departments from their dreary outings like The Diseased and the Poisoned or the Love Lies in Ashes EP, and they seem destined to configure themselves into much more than they once were. With this fourth full-length, I feel like I'm firmly eating one foot. Next time, I hope they'll have me eating both.

Verdict: Indifference [6.25/10] (watch me dig my own grave)

http://www.myspace.com/carnifexmetal

Carnifex - Hell Chose Me (2010)

Similar to how Job for a Cowboy have decided to abandon most of their deathcore/metalcore roots in favor of the path of true, grisly death metal (okay, not so grisly in their case), so too have Carnifex made the choice to follow a more challenging and engaging path in their music. Yes, I'm admitting, to my surprise and no doubt that of others, that this California band have written an album here which ALMOST does not suck. It follows all the conventions of its predecessor The Diseased and the Poisoned, but continues to inject more death metal and melodic death/thrash into the festivities, and the band can only benefit as a result. I'm not claiming that they've come up with some innovative or memorable material on their third full-length, but they sound as if they've seen the ghost-rays of enlightenment and are at least making a grasp at them as they radiate from a dead sun.

The title track instantly rages forth from the grave, a blasting burst of technical, modern death with some pretty intense drumming. A few riffs in and the band are rolling out riffs which remind me of legends like Consuming Impulse by Pestilence, and you don't hit a breakdown until after 1:30 in the song, and the breakdown itself is more interesting than many they've done in the past, with a little shredding over it and a descending note pattern. Not until the end, after 3:00 does the song plummet into unbridled stupidity, with a mosh riff lacking personality, that could have been infused to or fro any of the band's earlier albums. The band does not quite maintain this pace throughout. Several of the tracks are still choked to the neck with bad breakdown riffs that serve no other purpose than the slampit satisfaction of an eager audience seeking release. But at least songs like "Dead Archetype" and "Sorrowspell" features further glimpses of ambition and inspiration in some of the riffing choices, and a further test of proficiency for the band's immense rhythm section.

They've also got even meaner song titles here like "Entombed Monarch" and "Genocide Initiative", and have finally started to shift away from the baby-blues lyrics of the first few records, dealing a little more directly with ghastly hatred, misogyny and warfare. Don't get your hopes up, because there are still several relationship lament type songs here. I mean, we all know that deathcore music can lift us up when we get dumped or lied to by our first few teenage girlfriends. Trust me, it's not going to get any better, for your end or the other. But at least we have Carnifex calling out whores and the various demented acts they'd like to perform upon such enemies, rather than just 'woe is me' Gothic lolita bullshit.

By now, these guys are a pretty huge fixture in this sub-genre, with some retarded videos out and possibly their own fashion line for all I fucking know. The music seems to at least be rising to the occasion, or rising to the attention span of developing listeners who are probably no longer sated by the simplistic breakdowns that were not original when deathcore's predecessor, metalcore was engaging them at the straightedge gig. Sadly, those still remain, but Carnifex is attempting to make a number of them fit in better with the track, rather than stick out like sore thumbs of cheap suck action. Credit is due only that this is a better band than we've heard before, improving on most fronts. Who knows, within the next decade we might have something from the pen and joints of this quintet worth owning. Stamp out a few more of the dumber lyrics and breakdowns, and it is on, my friends.

Verdict: Fail [4/10]

http://www.myspace.com/carnifexmetal

Carnifex - The Diseased and the Poisoned (2008)

Seeing that the songwriting for the band's first two official releases was so miserable that it could not possible become worse by default, playing like a less interesting alternative to Job for a Cowboy, one would surmise that Carnifex had nowhere to go but up. To be fair, The Diseased and the Poisoned, the band's first album for Victory records, who saw some potential for profit in the band's viral appeal to 15 year old girls who have outgrown their Edward Scissorhands T-shirts and the 18 year old boys who love them and desire to rope them in with their wallet chains, is a subtle improvement over its predecessors. The reason being that the band write a lot more actual metal music here than they have in the past, and they grind their riffs off against the breakdowns in a far more timely, balanced fashion.

Yes, even apes will adapt to their environment if given the fruit and nurture, and thus too have Carnifex. The production, while not as loud or brutal as the previous album, is well executed. There are at least a few dozen riffs on this album which contain something akin to merit, even though they rarely last more than a few measures before transforming into the band's nauseous obsession for breakdowns. You can hear all the popular influences, from Swedish melodic death metal (the faster partitions of "The Nature of Depravity" or "Innocence Died Dreaming") to good old US metalcore mosh riffs (almost every song here). The album is kept short and spastic as it shifts between poles. 12 songs in 33 minutes gives it much more of a hardcore ethic, but really, if we're going to get technical, the band should have cut out about 21 of these minutes and written better songs around the better fragments of bone they project from their torment.

Almost every breakdown is irrelevant, though I notice a few of them take on a more bouncy effect than in the past, like a shallow mirror to Meshuggah, lacking the Swedish band's tact for hypnosis and lyrical dominance. Carnifex toss out some serious song titles here that might have you thinking for a second that they're interested in some real death metal: "Adornment of the Sickened", "Answers in Mournin", "Aortic Dissection", and "To My Dead and Dark Dreams" all ring of sufficient menace to carouse the mind off to its darker climes. But this is deceptive, because the lyrics are all still based in the pseudo-emotional vacuum of genre cliches. 'I'm dead inside and it's all I'll ever be', or 'I gave up everything', or 'I'm watching the rain fall through this broken glass, washing the blood from my hands'. This is Jonathan Davis level material here, minus the rap parts folks. Perfect reflections for the Twilight Saga fanatic. Go Team Deadward!

The Diseased and the Poisoned is adequate sounding in the mix, due to the experience of Zeuss at Planet Z (having helped bands like Shadows Fall and Killswitch Engage across the map). The drums are decent, and the guitars are far better than the previous releases. A few times the vocals remind me of Martin van Drunen. Through the depths of tracks like "Enthroned in Isolation", you can hear a genuine interest in some real death metal. Since the band do not suck entirely at this sort of approach, I would greatly encourage them to explore it further. Drop the shitty high school locker lyrics and about 90% of the breakdowns, and I would gladly eat my own boots. They're size 13, so you could enjoy watching me gnaw on them for some time. But it'll require something far more than this before I commence the unlacing.

Verdict: Fail [2.25/10]

http://www.myspace.com/carnifexmetal

Carnifex - Dead In My Arms (2007)

Apparently, the little angels and demons perched upon the shoulders of the members of Carnifex disagreed with my assessment of their debut EP Love Lies in Ashes, because they inspired the band to arm themselves with some new tattoos, increased attitude and a higher production standard, re-record the EP material and tack on some newer tracks for their first full-length effort, Dead in My Arms. But while the mix of this album might crush that prior offering, the music is largely just the same shallow, empty mire of brute moshing force and mock death metal sequences that we've already experienced, with no subtlety nor intricacy. You don't come to Carnifex to think or be inspired, my friends, you come to tear it up at the local club with all your high school and college adversaries. To let all that extremity and emotion hang out of your designer jeans and hot print tees.

I'm going to focus in on a single track here to display the tragedy that is this band in all its glory. "Slit Wrist Savior" is not a new composition, having appeared on the previous EP, but here it is as crunchy as clear we're likely to achieve. We begin with a double bass driven mosh/squeal riff typical of nearly any slam/death metal act on the planet, fully bereft of charisma or quality, while the vocalist Scott Lewis gurgles and snarls out Hallmark-card-gone-Goth poetry about a wrist cutter. About :45 in, the pace picks up to a thundering old school death metal rhythm, with a fairly bleak but inoffensive pattern of notes that is quite far from evil. At 1:00 you go into a slamming, thrash rhythm, and then back to a faster death metal rhythm, which isn't all that bad when the guitar melody arrives. Then a driving, melodic death riff, and a cadence on the snare, which is about to herald the onslaught of a HUGE BRUTAL MOSH RIFF. The riff sucks, of course, just the band jamming on low or open frets while the singer growls over them, before a brilliant secondary pause for a sample 'Fine, fuck you then', and ANOTHER sledgehammer mosh riff of no interest or curiosity whatsoever.

Yes, the two or three ideas that could have been developed in the earlier riff cycle are completely tossed out the fucking window so a cadre of mindless zombies at a live gig can get their freak on, windmilling and flexing their muscles and chains at the other gym-goers. Now, if you take this process and assemble it in slightly different patterns, you've come up with the remainder of Dead In My Arms. The band even toss in more samples of people saying things like 'what the fuck' before breakdowns, in other songs! If Carnifex is having a laugh at our expense, well then, I suppose, all the power to them, but then why waste a few minutes of this record on good riffing? Yes, there are a handful of considerate guitar riffs found throughout the album, like the burst intro of "A Winter in Remorse", which doesn't last very long; or about half the riffs in "Dead in My Arms", which evoke the melodic death of At the Gates from a distance.

But staring down the barrel of this band's limited arsenal of firearms, you can be assured that there is just too much fat to trim, fat that manifests in sluggish, chugging mayhem which is not even bordering on memorable. The lyrics are horrid manipulations of basic pop vocabulary or emotional hardcore that teach us all the woes of self-esteem issues and how tough and brutal life can be. With the same subjects in mind, an increased use of metaphor and imagery could actually render a more effective result, but these are all about bleeding and breathing and closing your eyes and suffering and beauty and ripping you apart! In other words, as effortless as a Lady Gaga or Beyonce track, if not more so. I can't help but feel Carnifex, as they appear on this album, are a soulless shadow of mightier metalcore of the past, when such breakdowns were pulled off by an Earth Crisis or Converge with far more sincerity. Now it seems they're products on an assembly line of brutal forgetfulness, being operated by minimum wage laborers who simply don't care too much except to occasional flip a button.

Verdict: Epic Fail [1.75/10]

http://www.myspace.com/carnifexmetal

Carnifex - Love Lies in Ashes EP (2006)

With every movement in extreme metal or any other genre of music, there are trend-setters and ass-stabbers. Trend-setters come along completely out of the blue, with a fresh spin on several previous formats, or even more rarely, something entirely different. Ass-stabbers just copy the blueprints that have manifested before them, with as big a budget and rockstar charisma as possible to ensure they can leapfrog over the trend-setters into the iPods and high school locker pinup pics of the crass and impressionable youth of American (and beyond). Carnifex is one of those entities who have taken the 'deathcore' style and just run with it, but not very far.

Almost as an indicator to just how pop-savvy and child aware this California band is, they open this teaser EP with a 40 Year Old Virgin sample. Great movie, mind you, but here this sample is used to thrust the listener into the band's immediate mindset, which is to evoke a whole lotta useless chug riffs and FUCK YOU UP MA'AN! Yes, Carnifex are about moshpits for your neighborhood, suburban 'rebels' that fit the profile of the modern 'emo'. I'm not opposed to such violence if it could somehow mesmerize me into my own state of caveman brutality, but as I mentioned, Carnifex are doing absolutely nothing interesting within this field. Primal, hammering mid to fast-paced rhythms lapse into mosh/squeal riffs stolen from countless brutal USDM acts, and then occasionally the band will slow things down even more to a mix of death and old school metalcore breakdowns that were pioneered by Earth Crisis and other blockheads back in the day.

Love Lies in Ashes consists of four tracks, and it was intended as a demo, but released through the web where the band arrived at much of their fandom. "Collaborating like Killers" starts at a fairly rapid pace, then devolves into a series of uninteresting chug riffs, especially the one around 3:00 in the song which sounds about as redundant as you can get. Just because you play your bottom frets open, in simplistic bludgeoning patterns, and then use guttural vocals over them, does not in any way make them heavy, and unless you're a 15 year old jock with a lot of excess testosterone to spill at a Carnifex gig, I can't see any entertainment value. "Love Lies in Ashes" offers the exact same formula, teasing you with a riff you might kick out of bed in the morning, then erupting into the same old, heavy ended chugging, which then segues into even more generic chugging. When will it fucking end? Not on this EP! "Slit Wrist Savior" is practically identical in construction, as is "Hope Dies with a Decadent". I seriously had to check the track list to make sure I was not merely repeating the same track on end.

This is terrible music which probably did not take these gentlemen more than a half hour to conceive, tops. The vocalist shifts from guttural grunting to higher pitched screams, as if this were grindcore, but unlike Carcass, they are neither funny nor creepy. The guitarists wrote a few riffs that were melodic like the At the Gates plagiarists Black Dahlia Murder, a few more that sound like Suffocation and Cannibal Corpse, and just filled in everything in between with awful romp-core mosh-poop for a misspent youth. Remember how that breakdown in "Raining Blood" was so effective 20 years before Carnifex released this? That was a breakdown. This? This is just toilet training for the LCD, extreme metal/hardcore novice who doesn't have the self-esteem to shop outside Hot Topic or the few vacant brain cells necessary to track down something better in the bins. Time for a courtesy flush.

Verdict: Epic Fail [1/10]

http://www.myspace.com/carnifexmetal