What differentiates this one from the rest of Cannibal Corpse's discography? Well the music flat out. Yes, still sticking to B-flat tuned guitars, low-end hoarse vocals with some screaming, decently recorded, aggressive drumming and of course a lyrical nightmare. This you may say is similar to the rest, but no, it it might sound that way from my words, what makes it unique? The fact that the guitar riffs are technical, variety in vocals, variety in brutality, creative musical output, intensity, and balls-out heavy. If you're still asking what makes it DIFFERENT? My answer is: THE GUITARS. You get riffs that are intense, technical, solid leads, and exceptional musicianship for a death metal band.

The opener may have you set on pouncing drumming with fast guitar, but there's variety here. It isn't all just fast. It varies. George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher is right on cue with the music. He really does a good job here and in my opinion his vocal style is more diverse and fitting for this death metal band. There may be people that favor Chris Barnes, but Corpsegrinder has range. His throat annihilation fits with the music better than Barnes' style hands down. These guys tear it up on here. I'd have to say that all the music on this one doesn't hit any rock-bottom or boring riffing. All the way from start to end, it's very well put together. They really make a statement here despite what the naysayers may say about it.

You still get that chunky sound once again, but the creativity in the music is what counts here. It's what differentiates it from other albums. They really hit home in my book on here because it isn't just an album of pure noise with blast beating all over the place and absolutely no musical purpose, it's actual purpose is to remain underground and once again over-the-top creative when they wrote the music for this one. Yes, you may say "but you said that they still tune the same and have chunky guitars", though I say on here the music made the magic of this album balls out great. The way they pieced together their riff-writing is what's insurmountably exceptional. The guitars dominate!

Still skeptical, huh? Well I'm going to say that this one covered all angles of music when they wrote it. Again, it is intense in a lot of different ways, but it also shows you how what critics may disagree with me on this is the fact that it sounds like Corpsegrinder is monotonous or the guitars are stale, but they'd be wrong. What I said was that it is creative, they explored sounds on the fretboard that make it yes heavy, but also unique because they decided to dig deep in the progression from their past albums amounting to one genuinely solid release. The leads were top notch and so technical, even though there wasn't an extensive amount of them on the whole album, they still were good.

Production lacked a little, not as solid as their later album 'Torture' (2012), but still the mixing was good and the whole album just is so intense and brutal, it'll blow your hair back. The guitars and vocals were the highlight plus the drums were right there blasting away at these prolific overtures. This is not just death metal, this is brutal death metal that digs deep in creativity's utopia. I really do think that this album is way underrated because a lot of people that heard this pretty much may as well have said it to be "generic" death metal. I don't feel that way about it, in fact, I think it was a musical progression. Don't leave this out of your Cannibal Corpse collection because it simply annihilates!

Rating: 9 (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Death8699
03/25/2015 12:19