Cephalic Carnage
Lucid Interval

THE REVIEW

Lucid Interval. Ok, I must have missed something. I try to listen to it again, again, and again, but the only lucid aspect here seems to be the title. Actually, not even that...
So, let's try to be "lucid" for a moment. Let's attempt to adequately describe the third work of this crazy quintet from Denver. By now, we are used to listening to bands that balance on the edge of chaos, whether they hail from post-hardcore environments or from metal in a stricter sense, thinking of the madness of Converge in the first case, or the odd times of Meshuggah in the second, Dog Fashion Disco, or Fantomas, Mr.Bungle, and Mike Patton's thousand parallel projects, or the Reiter who effortlessly blend genres opposed like folk, brutal, gothic or black metal. It's useless to dwell on this aspect; thousands of names can be mentioned. But Lucid Interval, no. Lucid Interval is really too much. What you would never have thought the blindest madness could put into music, they have done it. And to think we were well prepared. Exploiting Dysfunction had already highlighted these aspects, presenting us with a totally insane band, creators of a genre labeled by the usual taggers as hydro-grind, mixing grind, fusion, death metal, and jazz, mastering monstrous technique and a wealth of ideas that, if they were coins, would fill Uncle Scrooge's vault. But the Cephalic Carnage who composed this album seem to have a supernatural entity guiding them, an extra cog in the brain that makes all the others malfunction, they seem to want to say "Ok, do you want to know how to make a "truly" sick album? We'll show you."

Picture the scene. One day, Nasum wakes up bright and early and starts listening to Mr. Bungle, Neurosis, and Dillinger Escape Plan until evening, finally, exhausted from long coffees to stay awake and totally drunk, they decide to record an album playing songs of Cynic and Impaled Nazarene in the style of Cannibal Corpse or Anal Cunt. If all this really happened, the result would probably not be much different from the album we have in our hands.

Lucid Interval is the exact antithesis of lucidity! What may seem absurd here becomes the norm, you are transported into the midst of a sonic stew where volumes go to hell, annihilating riffs intertwine with extremely complicated structures, with a voice that transitions from the darkest growl to the most piercing scream, acoustic moments, beats, electronics, grind, black metal flashes, extreme accelerations, equally extreme slowdowns, guitars heavy as boulders that seem to want to rip the flesh off your skin. At first, one might wonder what lies behind this conception of music. But then it all becomes clearer (or if you prefer more "lucid") when the underlying irony becomes apparent, even just think of the title "Black Metal Sabbath" (where it almost seems like inspired Children Of Bodom are engaging in black metal and mixing it with grind, before moving on to death metal riffs that literally suffocate). Think of the 21 minutes of the concluding "Arsonist Savior," divided into two parts separated by a long silence that takes up much of its duration, where the fierce grind/death blasted at a thousand of the first alternates with the ambient/esoteric moments of the second, with a relative background melody, always accompanied by a tremendously low and brutal guitar. Think of the acoustic guitar in "Cannabism," complete with chipmunk-like voices!! Or even think about the length of the songs, where the "normal" 3 or 6-minute ones alternate with others fired off in a matter of seconds.

Lucid Interval cannot fail to scare those who are about to listen to it (not to mention those who actually listen). But the pure truth is that once it's in the stereo, removing it becomes impossible, due to an irrefutable, mysterious, and fascinating force with which the group attracts listeners, making them immerse in its structures, its brutality, its confusion, its irony. In the end, one ends up listening with ever-increasing interest just to see how it ends, or what other absurd surprises the group has in store for us. Lucid Interval is a spectacle. Damn, it's a fucking spectacle, and the ears of listeners cannot help but rejoice, whether it's hearing the melody, the brutality, the headbanging riffs, the more atmospheric parts... Lucid Interval is the perfection of imperfection, it's a set of meanings that have no meaning, a copy/paste of sounds as a metaphor for the concatenation of thoughts, the concept of stream of consciousness set to music, the most total madness, the synthesis of the human brain in its period of chronic crisis.

There's still reason to wonder what's behind the title Lucid Interval. But perhaps this "interval" is precisely the span of time in which you'll listen to it, in which you'll be immersed in oblivion, where the mind MUST journey and attempting to remain lucid will be an excruciating suffering.
A mentally deranged album made by the mentally deranged for the mentally deranged? It's an opinion... But here, the true madman seems to be anyone who lets this slip away. Don't do it too: be "lucid" for once. Brilliant, simply.