Chicago's Cardiac Arrest has come out with their 3rd full-length album entitled 'Haven for the Insane', which is on their current label, Ibex Moon Records. The band was founded in 1997 and they released their first EP back in 2004. Their current lineup features Adam Scott on lead vocals/guitar, Tom Knizner on lead vocals/guitar, Dave Holland on bass/backing vocals, Jim Deabenderfer on drums/backing vocals and Adam Conrad on guest backing vocals.

This band's genre is vintage death metal with guitars tuned to B-flat and leads displaying Adam Scott's talented mix of arpeggios/tremolo picking/tapping. The songs are energy filled with mostly fast tempos, but also with milder parts, which are few and far between. The music displays riffs that are chunky/heavy with a huge load of distortion. There are some instances of melodic sounds, but mostly a deep blend of tremolo picked parts and chord progressions.

Tracks such as 'Insanity's Grip', 'Rage on... Fuck off' and 'Affliction of the Beast' are good tracks to download in order to hear a bit of what this album is like. I enjoyed all of the tracks, but there were some songs that were more memorable than others. I like the heavy sounds which resemble a great deal like that of Dismember, Napalm Death and Morbid Angel influenced style of death metal.

The production is a little flat sounding, but overall it's solid. I still think that the band's debut full-length release entitled 'Morgue Mutilations' (2006) has a better production sound to it. Nevertheless, 'Haven for the Insane' sound wise contains a good mixture of all of the instruments, especially the main guitars. The vocals altogether are a blend of mainly burly spewed outputs with other backup high end screaming which is heard on a few tracks.

Lyrical content contains themes such as horror worship, gore and zombies. However, on the insert to this album, there are no lyrics that were published. On the band's older website, there were a few songs from their debut EP that the band made the public known what their topics chose to be on. The lyrics go hand in hand with the music because it backs up their overly heavy amounts of raging death metal. There are no cover songs on this release, but the track entitled 'Haunted Remnants' was re-recorded on this
full-length.

Overall, 'Haven for the Insane' is probably my second favorite album by the band. At present, 'Morgue Mutilations' is undoubtedly a classic and 'Cadaverous Presence' (2008) also is a strong output by the band. The vocals, guitars and drums were all highlights displayed here. My only complaint was the production, which was a bit flat sounding, as I previously mentioned. If you want to hear some gruesomely heavy and unrelenting death metal, this release is a must by all undying extreme music fans.

Rating: 8 (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Death8699
07/23/2010 20:37