Decapitated - Blood Mantra (2014)

Though Blood Mantra is far from the return to form I had hoped it could be, it at least sounds like the band assessed their second-rate 2011 effort Carnival is Forever, and then gave themselves a series of kicks in their own asses to provoke a little more genuine anger and energy into the inevitable followup. That's not to imply that this is in any way a 'good' record. It has proven even more forgettable with each successive listen, but if all hope had been lost through its predecessor, at least there is a spark now...maybe. Of course, when I see band members claiming "Blood Mantra is the most heavy and mature album we ever did in our career" amidst the usual shitstorm of metal press hyperbole, I have to wonder if the Poles are listening to the same record I'm hearing...because these guys were writing far more intricately sculpted, mature death metal when they were in their teens...Blood Mantra is the sort of disc that could honestly just turn up from any band with its feet soaked in death, grind and groove metal, and then straight to the bargain bins in the late 90s. Competent in its performance and production, but soulless in its pursuit of that timeless quality we attribute to top flight death metal.

It's a concussive affair which alternates between bland, robotic blasting passages, chugging queues beyond which the bass guitar is allowed to roil around in its distorted flatulence, and then various post-industrial atmospheres are strewn about, marking a return to the Organic Hallucinosis period. Frankly, it's not such a bad idea, and that was the last Decapitated disc I actually enjoyed, but alas, they don't do much with it beyond pay it some lip service...as a whole, this album never steps beyond the bounds that they've ever set before, and if you're expecting anything by way of compelling guitar progressions that characterized their first few albums, you are almost shit out of luck here. There are a few which achieve the syncopated, precision punch sophistication you'll recall from Nihility and "Spheres of Madness", and those are surely highlights here, but sadly the banal groove/nu-thrash metal elements arrive in the form of "Veins", etc which might as well just be textbook Soulfly or any of a number of other mediocre bands who tried to capitalize on that whole thing. I won't fault these guys for lacking variation or versatility...Blood Mantra is pretty carefully balanced to provide its audience with a number of mood shifts, but the issue for me is that none of these moods are capable to provoke memorable atmosphere beyond the LCD neck-strain and pit-flexing requisite of popular metal bands.

Based on raw musical proficiency alone, this stuff does deliver. Michał Łysejko is flawless on his debut, but perhaps a little too flawless, since his aptitude is so resoundingly mechanical that you wonder why they even needed to hire a human. But let's not write the guy off completely, because he's also capable of showing some restraint where needed during the more progressive side of the record where the guitars take on far more importance. The guitars are somewhat technical, and do often go into some minute detailing, but the issue is that the notes are just not that interesting in succession and I felt that, even with all the considering meandering between tempos, I was still staring at some level, unbroken, not-too-creative plateau. The bass tone sounds great, but there are never any lines that catch the ear, and the leads just feel like runs through scales or structures rather than efforts to explode with either orgasmic emotions or frightening industrial dissonance. Man, it just got boring...no matter how skilled these guys seem, how many endorsements they receive, how many tours they embark upon, there's something to be said when single songs off Winds of Creation are more interesting and memorable than all of the content combined on an album 14 years younger...

Rafal's vocals are just as bog standard here as on the last album, a pastiche of Cavalera, Anselmo and Greenway cliches which basically just fill in the spreadsheet of what needs to be grunted and barked and utterly indistinguishable from a thousand other front men. Your friendly neighborhood corner groove metal guy. Not all the lyrics here are bad, but it's particularly funny when he's grunting out the 'fuck for money/fuck for name!' lines in the song "Instinct", during a groove over which I kept finding myself reciting Flava Flav's chorus in the old Public Enemy track "911 is a Joke", for whatever reason. Parts like this simply feel like they involve more pandering and rabble rousing to those whom only the exclamation of profanity can inspire from their shoddy lives, which is a little frustrating because half of what the band has to say here about the disenchantment of the Millennial internet generation (which has been the subject matter for about 3 albums straight) carries some weight. If only Blood Mantra wasn't, itself, contributing to that very same sense of futility, anxiety and impotence. Everything in the world at your fingertips...all that history, all that information, and no cause or purpose with which to approach, nothing whatsoever to do with it all...just like the musical chops on exhibition here. An inoffensive, competent musical battery? Sure. Superior to the band's career nadir to date? Why not? The once-bright future of death metal? Extinguished.

Verdict: Indifference [6.25/10] (find me a faith)

http://www.decapitatedband.net/

Decapitated - Organic Hallucinosis (2006)

After a few years of decline, Organic Hallucinosis was both a welcome surprise and my second favorite of Decapitated's works, but that comes with a couple caveats. Firstly, that they sound like a much different band than on Winds of Creation and Nihility. Also, I can completely grokk why some people wouldn't be into this whatsoever, including long term fans of the band who were even on board for The Negation. The truth is that Organic Hallucinosis presents us with a bludgeoning, futurist death thrash experience which to me sounds like Meshuggah being run up against the Polish death metal roots; not that they employ the same djent style as the Swedes, but they both lend that impression that you're facing some industrialized, machine-like calculation of intelligence rather than the organic warmth associated with humanity, and without need for incorporating excess electronics. 'Posthuman death metal' is not a bad descriptor, and coupled with the first compelling cover artwork of the band's whole career, the album just hit me so hard that I was not left wanting.

Granted, I've cooled off a bit on my admiration for this over time. It was originally one of my favorites the year it dropped (2006), but these days I don't hold it in such high esteem, apart from a few tunes like "Visual Delusion" which still turn my brain and knees into jelly. Essentially they'd ramped up the aesthetics of The Negation to a mechanical cohesion, intensified the battery and applied a new frontman (Covan) to the fold, who had a more burly timbre to his voice which reminded me slightly of Max Cavalera's barks or Burton C. Bell's brutal vocals. Actually, thinking of this disc as Fear Factory's faster and heavier material meets a Morbid Angel or 21st century Behemoth is quite appropriate. Seven songs, concise plotting at just around 32 minutes, in and out of the conscience and leaves you bleeding from the ears. Still a reliance on heavier palm muted riffing progressions than their debut, which functioned brilliantly off those acrobatic note choices by Vogg, but this is way more explosive than even The Negation and that cybernetic merger of flesh and nihilism in the rhythm tone just lets this one take off so much further in the imagination, especially when engraved with tasteful little lead licks and often some jarring shifts in tempo/direction that erupt where you wouldn't necessarily be expecting them.

Organic Hallucinosis often makes my heart feel like it's freezed up and is slowly being coated in chrome, like the Borg virus is taking over my person and I'm being ghosted in my shell. The brutal, thrashing, punchy guitars in tunes like "Flash-B(l)ack" manifest enough groove and excitement while the album as a whole does maintain a relatively blasted momentum, often to the extent that exhaustion might set in were it not so short. But that's really the theme running through this material: that the human frame gives out and its skin and muscle is replaced by unfeeling metal, lyrics exploring the pessimistic side of civilization, from being covered in its waste ("Day 69") through the inevitable 'evolution' into machinekind ("Post (?) Organic). The drumming is simply ungodly, one of the most incredible exertions I've heard on a Polish death effort, and contributing more than any other factor into how inhuman the experience leaves you. To some extent, I do these days find a lot of the actual riffs lacking...as pieces to the whole they function unanimously, but I did still long for the mindbending musicality Vogg was capable of at a younger age, and therefore Organic Hallucinosis could really not ever replace Winds of Creation. Yet at the cost of distancing themselves from their origins, they managed to breed some new motivation and potential...

...which only adds to the tragedy of this being the last album for almost all the members involved. Vogg would continue with a new lineup for the mediocre Carnival is Forever, a bouncier and dumbed down Decapitated for a new decade. But we lost Vitek's substantial skills in the Belarus car accident, as well as Covan (who is still recovering from massive head injury); and then the long time bass player Marcin Rygiel departed before the band went into a sizable slumber. The universe fucks us once again out of a dementedly talented musician, well before his time, and its a shame that we would never experience what the same four would have done on an Organic followup. I like to imagine that they might have gone back to that creative riffing of the debut and then embedded that into the caustic brutality employed on this record, a potential game changer. Alas, I'll never really know, but I do know that this is the first Decapitated disc I reach for when I'm not in the specific mood for Winds of Creation. There are some imperfections, and it doesn't hold up for me quite like that initial exposure eight years back, but it belongs in that once-future classification I attribute to albums like Demanufacture or Darkane's Rusted Angel, and while that's not the sort of hardware that everyone will enjoy, I can plug right into it.

Verdict: Win [8.25/10] (son of serialized destruction)

http://www.decapitatedband.net/

Decapitated - The Negation (2004)

The final album from the classic Decapitated lineup (before Covan stepped in to replace Sauron) also happens to be the one I most struggle to remember. Both the cover art and production values of The Negation are superior to Nihility, but musically they seemed to continue a process of stagnation without abandoning the energetic musicianship. A lot of the riffing passages remind me quite a lot of Morbid Angel circa Covenant or the faster Vader blitzes, or more accurately an analog to Behemoth's death metallic tirades of the late 90s/21st century; sufficiently explosive and muscular, but lacking much real staying power once the percussive consistency has vacated the listener's brain. This album does indeed sound great through the speakers, and I kept waiting for those money shot guitar progressions circa the earlier albums to help fill out the intensity of the execution, but they never seemed to cu...show up. It's safe harbor to a number of retread ideas thickened with a little more meat.

For example, "Three-Dimensional Defect" has a lot of that pinpoint muted aggression circa "Spheres of Madness", only with more shredding in there; while a number of other tunes have opening riff salvos that almost remind me of new millennium Slayer material if it were to quickly be subsumed by Sandoval blast storms and picking punches that lack a lot of individual character. This is very likely Decapitated at its densest, and I do enjoy the guitar tone a lot here as it eschews the aridity of its predecessor, but as one seeking those winding, hectic but highly musical note progressions that defined Winds of Creation, I felt like this album often suffered from a lot of what might plague a band like Krisiun, that Morbid Angel or Deicide-inspired reliance on heavy brickwork without much clever or unique songwriting. Brutality and speed first, and a lot of insipid palm mute passages to which distinction is a foreign concept. The sword is mightier than the pen this time around, and the best I can say for it all is that Vitek's drumming certainly seemed to have continued to develop. This is probably his most intense performance over the four albums he was with the band, but without anything interesting to beat the skins to it just doesn't matter so much.

I have a hard time coming up with even a half-dozen guitar parts on this album that I'd consider keepers, like in "The Empty Throne" or "Three-Dimensional Defect" which felt like leftovers from the Nihility sessions, or a lick or two from the title track. Sauron sounds a hell of a lot like David Vincent on Domination, which is not a negative necessarily, but the guy would simply never evolve his gutturals into something that a hundred other guys don't already have covered (he's a little better on the second Masachist effort, Scorned, but still not unique. Lyrically Decapitated remain consistent, they've never been a gore band, so the song subjects deal with the constraints of our flawed beliefs, religions, human vices/impulses or civilizations as a whole, but then the music is just too rarely thoughtful to drive them home. They cover Deicide's "Lunatic of God's Creation", but unlike the Slayer tune on the debut, there's not much making it their own, because aside from a few production tweaks its exactly like the origin...stylistically dependent, and that post-bridge section seems to have directly translated into a handful of their own riffs on this album. The Negation is ultimately one of those albums which comes off as effectively brutal without much need for dizzying complexity, but after a decade of second chances, it just don't cultivate enough sticky chops to bother with.

Verdict: Indifference [6.75/10] (the myth of the reward)

http://www.decapitatedband.net/

Decapitated - Nihility (2002)

Nihility was the second and final Decapitated album. Okay, that's a lie, but it was really the last to truly deliver on what I felt was so strong an aesthetic foundation, and even then the well of brilliant riffing had begun to dry. It would be a stretch to call this a 'disappointment', but it was certainly a step down from Winds of Creation, retaining only a handful of tracks that were created at that same level of quality, and seemingly watered down with some simpler chugging death metal architecture that would create a more accessible interface with their growing audience. Really, though, it comes down to a selection of riffs which are simply more banal or boring than the debut, and might have been written by anyone in the Polish scene. There were a lot more points at which my 'oohs and ahs' were replaced by 'that sounds like Vader, or Morbid Angel', or whatever, and I also felt like the production here was also a bit more arid and non-compelling.

Funny thing, though, is that I know a number of folks for whom this was the first, and remains the favorite Decapitated listening experience. These people are wrong, of course, but let them have their delusions! Nihility seems to pursue a more cosmic, philosophical side than its predecessor, which was already fairly serious in terms of its lyrical bent, but unfortunately the ideas on parade don't really take that progressive next step which would have integrated more melody or stranger song structures you might expect of a maturation effort. Instead, this is a mix of about a half-dozen of the brilliant guitar patterns off Winds of Creation with a slew of death/thrash tropes redolent of the bands I listed above. You still get that drop-of-a-dime sense of concussive stop/start precision, and Vogg can swerve off into a monstrously memorable passage that stands among the best he's ever written, but they're just not as consistent. There are 'filler' songs here, without a doubt, if not many of them, and rather than listen through the entire 35 minutes and find myself questioning my worth as a musician, I always seem to skip around to particular tunes. And even then, there is nothing quite on the level of a "Blessed", "Eye of Horus" or any of the other masterworks they produced at a younger age...though a few tunes come admittedly close.

Exceptions are "Spheres of Madness", which has an effortless punctuality to the chugging that becomes instantly recognizable once it breaks into that second, clinical muted riff. "Eternity Too Short" and "Nihility" itself also feature some of those dizzying feats of dexterity, but other tunes like "Names" and "Babylon's Pride" leave something to be desired and I could list a number of other post-Morbid Angel bands in the same scene (Behemoth, Hate) who also might have created something similar as they were eking out their own stylistic transitions. That's not to say Nihility is lazy or lacks some creative drive behind its blueprint, but having expected the band's sophomore to splatter my brains everywhere and perhaps arrive as one of the most frighteningly intelligent albums in its niche in many years, I was pretty bummed that it was at best more of the same and at worst evidence of the 'sophomore slump'. The production itself, while technically not bad, seems to work against the seismic wonders of the performance...louder drums and a less warm guitar tone give it less depth, and Sauron's vocals felt rather dry, dull and might have been contributed by just run of the mill guttural guru, though they use some panning and other techniques to blend them into the atmosphere.

Still, I don't wanna seem too 'down' on this one, because if I were to pick some random gore splatter tech death record off the shelf in this period, Nihility would have still proven superior. The band fires on most cylinders and retains its concise and exciting impressions at times when the material isn't at the particular standard I expected, and surely they don't embarrass themselves, or experiment with the djent or groove-like elements that populate their more recent recordings. I can't help but wonder if the successful buzzing of the debut kept them so occupied that they simply didn't have the time to let a number of these tunes fully gestate, but then that material had been around years prior to the Wicked World signing, so I doubt it. I should also note that, while remaining sort of lame, abstract and computer generated, the color scheme and imagery on this disc were more welcoming than on Winds of Creation; the lyrics are also on the same plane as the first effort, if occasionally hinging on philosophical gibberish. Ultimately, Nihility hovers below that horizontal border of greatness, and has not improved with age, but if I were to collect a 'career best' I might snap up 2-3 of these songs, remix them, tag them onto the tail of the debut and call it a day.

Verdict: Win [7.75/10] (devoured by perfect entirety)

http://www.decapitatedband.net/

Decapitated - Winds of Creation (2000)

Winds of Creation is not the sort of album one experiences every day, and at the dawn of the 21st century, that was exponentially the case. I had grown quite jaded on a lot of brutal/technical death metal and was finding my thrills elsewhere, but records like this and Cannibal Corpse's underrated masterpiece Bloodthirst rechristened my attention span for the style. Decapitated's Earache/Wicked World debut is hands down one of the better efforts the Polish scene has produced, proudly standing alongside Calm Machinery, Lost Soul and about half of the estimable Vader backlog, while taking only minimal cues from their countrymen or really any regional death metal sound the world over. In fact, Winds of Creation was so anomalous that even the band's own future output, as hard as they might try, could not really compare to it riff-for-riff, so I've obviously revealed my hand here... This is The One. This is my favorite Decapitated material and very unlikely to be dethroned if they keep producing duds like Carnival is Forever in the immediate future...not that they haven't put out other good albums in the interim, but whenever I journey back 14 years to experience how refreshingly intense they were upon their debut to the world, I become fairly frustrated at such an inconsistent legacy.

Let's clear the obvious: I don't know of too many death metal bands who were performing at such a level of proficiency at so early an age...most of them still teens during this era, and playing progressions of notes with both a precision and agility that would make Trey Azagthoth blush. I chose that man intentionally, because I feel that somewhere along the line, it was his intense velocity picking on records like Altars of Madness, Covenant and Domination which might have inspired Vogg's playing. Other than that, there's not much of a comparison I might make elsewhere in death metal...Decapitated were brutal and incorporated a lot of the dense chugging components one might expect, but they were always interesting and served primarily as bridges between the classically-inspired progressions that put the band on the map. The riffs included some inherent groove to them, but were also incredibly detailed and complex...which would mean nothing if they weren't so goddamned catchy. Even if I listen to renowned records like None So Vile or Pierced from Within, the intricacy and forethought of these particular tunes reveals an entire other level of calculation and execution. Mysticism and technique translated into pure concussion, and hopefully (but not ultimately) the precursors to many such exhibitions to come. Part of Decapitated's appeal was pure spectacle, but these were not songs lacking in substance...in fact, they patented a form of gluey guitar porn here which has been gangbanging my gray matter ever since.

Fuck, just the riffing of "Blessed" alone is more inventive and impressive than the sum of ideas found on most brutal death metal records, and though I won't call the music 'accessible' to a broad audience, it's surprisingly easy to follow regardless of the acrobatics. A fusion of old school tremolo picked death metal aesthetics via the Floridian forerunners with something more eloquent, accurate and explosive. Eager and technical enough to assert itself into a younger generation of listeners raised on soulless, brutal death metal where technique, mosh culture and soulless brutality took center stage above songwriting, but also itself a flavorful and solid example of the latter, substantial enough for death vets like myself to spin it endlessly (at least so far). This is not a PERFECT album, it didn't entirely rewrite the playbook for me like those first two Pestilence discs, or Left Hand Path, or Realm of Chaos, but it was certainly unexpected that such a young band could come forth and help reinvigorate my interest in the largely stagnant cesspool of soundalikes that the medium had long been steered towards. And it doesn't just end with the rhythm guitars, because the leads are frilly and exciting, the drumming of the late Vitek far better balanced and grooved out than on the band's previous demos, and even the bass-playing here dextrous and mandatory to anchor down the mile a minute guitar picking centered on endlessly genius 'fills' of note choices.

Sauron's probably the least advanced figure in this equation, but his blunt guttural presentation proves a welcome contrast against the brighter, thinner guitar picking. Like a neanderthal being tapped to present the latest NASA technology, he's got an expressive low-end roar somewhere between a Karl Willetts and Frank Mullen, and throws a lot of decayed sustain that stands out against the clinical production of those goddamned guitars. Though Winds of Creation is largely culled from the Eye of Horus demo (1998), it sounds deeper, darker, more serious and sinister, otherworldly beings channeled into the limbs and lips of a quartet of young Polish gentlemen. It's also quite compact: just about 30 minutes of concise, incredible content before the "Dance Macabre" ambient outro leads into an excellent cover of Slayer's "Mandatory Suicide" which maintains the original's sense of heinous despair, while making it their own. Granted, I felt like, as with most album-closer cover songs, that it did detract a little from the supernova of excitement and originality that they were creating with their own content, but if you're going to include one, even such a safe choice, then it must be at least this good.

Otherwise, the only complaint I might have is the shitty imagery on the cover art, which looks fiery and acceptable at a distance but really just seems like the cluttered, computer-generated garbage you'd find on a lot of records in the latter half of the 90s (Monstrosity was also guilty of this on their sophomore). But it seems a moot complaint when the music is just this impressive. Winds of Creation might not be perfect, and I might not short-list it among the 10-20 death metal records I'd bring with me to a desert island, but it is the only valid justification for the band's considerable career hype, and an album they have yet to match. I do appreciate other Decapitated discs for other reasons, and the aesthetics of this one certainly fuel the followup Nihility to some extent, but the amount of effort Vogg packs into individual tracks seems to have devolved, to have dumbed itself down on subsequent recordings. I can only imagine what travel in the opposite direction might have offered us, but at least this debut still stands as a standard-setting monolith for what a musician can pull off, even at such an impressively young age. Am I jealous much? Well, I definitely was the first 50 times I popped this in my CD player. How could I not be? Tremendous stuff.

Verdict: Epic Win [9.25/10] (their gods are only illusions)

http://www.decapitatedband.net/

Decapitated - The First Damned (2000)

Decapitated stormed onto the scene at the dawn of the new millennium with not one, but two recordings, a phenomenal debut through Earache and a collection of their demos through Metal Mind Productions, which was pretty much THE homeland label for about a decade before this. The First Damned did arrive earlier than most 'first compilations' in a band's career, but it's not hard to understand why they would generate such excitement and warrant the treatment before even spreading a name for themselves beyond their local region...and in truth, hearing these guys mete out such technical finesse and unique spin on technical death metal while several of them were still in their teens was incredibly humbling and mind boggling...so much so that I almost didn't believe it at first...

Yes, I thought Decapitated must have been a band of proxies for scene veterans, because I couldn't admit to myself that these youths could be so brilliantly, blindingly talent, but I'm happy to have been proven wrong. The downside to The First Damned is that so much of its content, in particular the 1998 demo (The Eye of Horus) was also found on Winds of Creation where it sounded superior, not to mention the Polish Assault split released on Relapse which is basically the same demo. I'll get into a lot more of a description when I cover that beloved debut record, but coming out so close it certainly seemed redundant. My preference is for the album, simply because I prefer the drum and guitar tone, but this is nonetheless quite professional, with a clean and potent mix of rhythm guitars that advertises Vogg's bewildering level of dexterity and all around quality of composition when run up against almost ANY OTHER guitarist in the genre at the time, several of which were obvious innovators before his time, and perhaps even technically comparable, but not writing such an inspirational bevy of riffs in 2000. Once again, it's difficult to be a guitarist interested in this style and not feel bewildered by the playing, though the guitars outclass the rest of the performance.

Of a bit more interest to me was the Cemeteral Gardens material (1997), which was perhaps slightly less proficient but still impressive for the guys' age. Style-wise this isn't much different than what they'd create later, with tunes like "Ereshkigal" cultivating a mildly more old-school Florida death meets Vader style albeit more upbeat and frenzied in the picking. The production was still good, but the guitars took the center stage here a bit much (just like the second demo), and the drums and bass settled more into the background, though I don't want to leave an impression they're inaudible...they are. At any rate, this material was the reason I bought the disc when I saw it advertised, I had already acquired Winds and was interested in having it for completion's sake just to hear the other demo content that didn't wind up on the full-length. And it's quite good, even the substantial organ intro to "Destiny". It's simply unbelievable to me that by 1997 Decapitated was already this polished, and they immediately made an impact on a budding death scene that hard largely consisted of tape releases outside of Vader, Behemoth's transformation from black to death metal, and a scant handful of other bands that had jumped to CD.

The two live offerings, "Way to Salvation" and "Nine Steps" were from the Olsztyn, Poland 'Thrash Em All' festival in 2000, not to be confused with several other gigs that shared the same name later, and they sound fantastic, giving a louder mix of the drums and a level of performance that is nearly consistent with their studio time. I mean, you put these tunes together with Winds of Creation and you can tell this was not just another band of brutes churned out the genre grinder, but something dressed to impress, built to last, which we all know now would not be the case due to a number of internal tragedies and inconsistent output, but was something to get excited for at the time. As to how I would rate or evaluate The First Damned, I must give it points for its completeness and even offering a small bonus, but I would not want to turn anyone away from the debut album where the band sounded even greater. If this was your first exposure to the Poles, then it would assuredly seem more resonant and remarkable, but alas it was my second, so it suffers from the redundancy I often face with demo anthologies of songs that were successfully refined. Still, a good collection, with no fucking around, and the chance to support a strong label that was delivering the goods long before the rest of the world could readily access them.

Verdict: Win [7/10] (a thorn in your eye forever)

http://www.decapitatedband.net/

Decapitated - Carnival is Forever (2011)

Upon viewing its Slipknot-like cover image and hearing a reel of audio samples with no real highlights, I admit I was dreading a flop of Morbid Angel proportions from the 5th Decapitated record. The once Polish prodigy seems to have almost entirely abandoned the technical death metal roots that made them such an international force at such a stunning, young age with Winds of Creation. They've devolved into a creative wasteland of hyper djent and grooving death/thrash which, while not exactly effortless, seems more for the mall than the maelstrom of nuclear potential they once expressed. I understand the band here (outside of guitarist Vogg) is entirely new, and that the passing of drummer Vitek would have a profound effect on the others (he was fantastically talented). But if you had told me at the turn of the century that Decapitated would end up a hybrid of Meshuggah and Pantera, I would have given you the same astonished stare I give crazy people. Or ACORN employees.

Yeah, so "The Knife" features driving Meshuggah rhythms and vocals that fall somewhere between Max Cavalera and Phil Anselmo, and while I don't always have a problem with the style, the verses had me on the edge of shouting 'Fuckinnng hostttiilleee!' at my neighbors. The tune is snappy, aggressive and has a mechanical sheen to it, created through the vocal samples hanging at the edge of perception in its bowels; it even has a half-decent lead from Vogg. But within 30 seconds, I had to struggle just to remember a damn thing about it, and sadly, the album just does not get much better beyond that. The energy through "United" and "404" is unbridled, sure, but these are nothing more than streams of power chugged mutes played at faster than average speed with bouncing bass lines and mechanized grooves woven through. Not a single riff on this entire album carries the same perfection as "The First Damned", "Way to Salvation" or "Blessed" from the debut album, and its industrialized undercurrent is even less appealing than its predecessor Organic Hallucinosis.

In fact, the album is such a spastic dullard that whenever Decapitated veers away from their staple aggression, like the clean guitars that inaugurate "A View from a Hole" or the brooding bass deep in the title track, or even the bland acoustic finale "Silence", I actually welcomed the shift in perspective. Carnival is Forever is an experiment in contrasts with nothing experimental about it...a safety net of belligerent impulse threaded with un-subtle segues that create only an illusion of emotional depth. This is the aural equivalent of throwing a rage at your Mom if she failed to drop you off at the hockey meet at the proper time, or your girlfriend when she dumps you for being an angry, volatile ass. It's not without its implicit skill-set...after all, this is Vogg, a frighteningly talented guitar player who seems to have forgotten his own potential, and it's not quite the vortex of ill-bred ideas that Illud Divinum Insanus was, but this is the first major disappointment I've ever felt from the Poles. Deflated death metal starlets. What could be more depressing? All I could think of as I listened through this a third and fourth time to compose my thoughts was: thank the heavens below that Vader would never pull something like this.

Verdict: Indifference [5.25/10]

http://www.decapitatedband.net/