Cephalic Carnage
Anomalies

Three years after the frightening "Lucid Interval" (the album where the band reaches the height of madness, perhaps caused by a little too much plant), the American Cephalic Carnage (an ironic name that surely mocks the typical styles and names of brutal-grind bands) release the new "Anomalies."

Acclaimed by critics and audiences, "Anomalies" is probably the album with which Cephalic Carnage manage to make themselves more known to the extreme music public, and places them among the most important names in today's death-grind scene. Structurally, the album differs significantly from the band's previous works: while "Exploiting Dysfunction" or the aforementioned "Lucid Interval" focused on more distorted and hallucinatory sounds, and especially alternated 5-6 minute tracks with simple 40-50 second grind blasts, this "Anomalies" is probably their most concise and violent album, where the guitars are definitely more incisive and perhaps there are fewer sudden tempo changes, yet it does not betray the group’s unmistakable identity and style.

The songs are generally quite short, all around 2-3 minutes long, except for some exceptions like "Piecemaker" (5:35 min), a very successful experiment where they venture into stoner/doom territories reminiscent of great bands like Cathedral, and "Dying Will Be The Death Of Me" (4:41 min), a track that harkens back to the new wave of British heavy metal from the '80s with a real Iron Maiden-esque solo and clean vocals in the chorus. The concluding "Ontogony Of Behavior" is a nearly 10-minute track that starts off calm and then intensifies more and more until it unfolds (about halfway through) into a whirlwind of blastbeats and growls and ends with a very effective sound distortion effect. The rest of the tracks, like the opener "Scientific Remote Viewing", "The Will Or The Way", "Sleeprace" and "Kill For Weed" (which tells of a man recounting to the singer how he killed for drugs) bear the trademark of Cephalic Carnage, a war machine (or perhaps "plant") that consistently produces that addictive effect, leading listeners to hit the play button again once the album is finished.

Thanks to its structure being surely more simplified than in the past, Anomalies is an album that flows smoothly, with no drop in tension. The engagement is consistently high throughout the 45 minutes of total duration and the album's dark and delirious atmosphere blends perfectly with the music produced. In summary, "Anomalies" is yet another bullseye hit by Cephalic Carnage, an excellent album of death/grind that ranks among the best releases of 2005. Probably the band's fans will feel a bit nostalgic for the past records, which are less accessible but definitely more "crazy" and unpredictable, but certainly, this new LP will win the group new hordes of fans.

Worth trying.