Carnage
Dark Recollections

Among the progenitors of Death metal buried by time and misfortunes, it's impossible not to mention the Swedish Carnage, not to be confused with their namesakes from Great Britain; although few remember them, they can easily be counted among the greats of the genre and in particular among those who proposed a primordial Death still largely linked to the dying Thrash metal.

Indeed, while Thrash was dying under the blows of the Grunge phenomenon, which attracted kids like flies to honey, the true metal crowd was taking refuge in an impregnable stronghold, taking refuge in a more violent, more powerful, darker Thrash upon which no one could lay hands; built on illustrious foundations such as Slayer, Possessed, and Sepultura, Death metal was born. This newborn genre of metal, however, immediately split into many subgenres; Grindcore (early Napalm Death, Impetigo, Repulsion, early Carcass, Assuck), Brutal Death (Cannibal Corpse, Suffocation, Immolation, and many more), Doom Death (partly Benediction, Incantation, Accidental Suicide) and Death, properly called the one that had given rise to all the others, the "True Death Metal" if we want to call it that. In this last category, besides bands of the caliber of the early Death, Obituary, Entombed, Dismember, Cancer, we can indeed include Carnage. This serves to immediately frame the kind of sound they have and especially to guide well the nostalgics of the early nineties; not by chance, in my belief in recovering the lost sheep, I would like to dedicate this review to the overly skeptical (and now degraded to a simple "scrap metal basher") car wrecker. With this review, I want to start a cycle aimed at rediscovering the cult bands erased from the memory of traitorous metalheads.

As I was saying, Carnage falls into that branch of Death without many pretensions, devoted to pure aggression and, I repeat, a child of art (partly as a "philosophy", much in sound) of the toughest Thrash: despite this, this "Dark Recollections" was released in 1990, one of the great years for Death Metal (which had its boom between 1988 and 1991 excluding some flashbacks around 1995). And this is an essential fact because after 1990 the Brutal Death bands began making headway, overshadowing the others considerably and, it can be said, taking away much weight in the metal scene. Carnage still believes and hence this CD is born; ten ruthless, acrid, and nasty tracks.

The riffing isn't overly complicated, the band members don't have exceptional technical skills, but believe me, with their Entombed-like distortion they create a truly hard wall of sound: something the Brutal Death colleagues will never understand, the pleasure of carpet bombing and that streetwise nastiness unknown to most of them. You won't hear spectacular drum passages, but normal four-four, regular double-bass drumming, and very few offbeats. The four are not lacking in instrumental prowess, but compared to other musicians in extreme metal they are definitely inferior; and what I mean is that this does not make them any less appreciable. Completing the journey into Metal's glorious past are some solos of decent craftsmanship but certainly not overly complicated; and above all still quite a clean growl that doesn't intend to be as low and powerful as possible. Those gloomy "melodies" typical of Obituary are not lacking here, even though the major influences are certainly those of compatriots Entombed. The bassist, as often happens, is barely audible and besides, the guitars are lowered enough that you don't feel much of a need for it. The production, dirty but unfiltered enough, completes the portrait of "Dark Recollections"; a record for aficionados, for fans of the eighties and especially of how metal was made in those years.

If you fell in love with Obituary, if you miss Entombed, if for you "Leprosy" is already too progressive, if "Necroticism: Descanting The Insalubrious" is the limit beyond which Death should not have ventured, this record is for you. And even if, like myself, you love more modern and technical things, get this CD because it's a true milestone.