CEPHALIC CARNAGE - Anomalies

12 songs
45:47 minutes
***** *****
Relapse / Suburban

Bandpage

Grind core has come a long way, from the pioneering days of early Napalm Death where tradition compelled bands to have more songs than minutes on an album, to a band like Cephalic Carnage, who average nearly four minutes per song, and add enough different flavours that it would be unjust to peg them down on just one single genre.

Their new album Anomalies is again a masterpiece of progressive grind music, and even if the first couple of songs are more or less traditional CC, with hyperblast drums and incredibly shredding guitars, it's the feat of listening many times to this album that shows you the true genius of this band. Where I regretted on the Into The Moat review that technicality ruled over creativity, Cephalic Carnage are cool enough to add stoner elements in Piecemaker, to show a nearly radio-compatible face with Dying Will Be The Death Of Me, and the closing Ontogony Of Behavior proves that even grindcore bands can write ten minute songs that make sense (unlike Pig Destroyer's pretentious half hour epic Natasha).

Apart from that you get high quality freak out grind stuff, superbly produced and engineered, building up a pressure to high to be believable, and thus making you want to listen again and again, because the brutal song material is done so subtly that new elements reveal themselves to the listeners with continuous exposure to Anomalies. Just listen to the crazy angular Enviovore, and you know what I mean.

So is this album better than the last big selling Dillinger Escape Plan, a band everyone seems to be compared to these days? Where DEP win when it comes to catchy melodies, I guess that Cephalic Carnage get the cup when it comes to sheer brutality, energy and kick-ass mentality. This fourth album by the American new grind kings needs to be in every well sorted collection of sonic mayhem.