Album Review: Cranial Disorder - Congenital Depravity
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
I wonder if Suffocation knew what they’d started all those years ago when they released “Human Waste” and “Effigy of the Forgotten”, flicking a switch which lit light bulbs over the heads of kids around the world who would go on to yank death metal by lengths of coiled bowel into even more unfriendly territory. 30 and a bit years later, brutal death comes with quite the history, from the dizzying acrobatics of Defeated Sanity, to medieval torture aficionados Brodequin and their scabrous blasturbation marathons, to the caustic slam beatdown of Devourment. Happily, the current brood lives up to this putrid lineage, with recent work from Nithing, Submerged, Trichomoniasis and plenty more besides being more akin to siege weaponry than anything else. Brutal death metal fans – all four of them – really have been eating very well lately. So. Can Cranial Disorder measure up to both their gruesome heritage and rival abattoir denizens?
The initial answer is a resounding...eeeeehhh, kinda sorta. Part the epidermis. Slip the scalpel through a streaked sheath of fat, marbled and clammy yet split with a whisper of the steel edge. What secrets nestle within? an initial listen reveals nigh-devotional suffocation worship. Competent, to a surety, but really only two cuts stand out on preliminary examination, the front-towards-enemy detonation of “Exalting the Perversion” and the spirit of NYHC via the route of Dying Fetus of “Traitor”, a pit-friendly hand grenade that threatens to induce more thrashing arms and legs than a squid orgy. But little of the rest leaves a lasting first impression. I think it might be a question of velocity; compositionally these songs don’t differ too thoroughly from, say, Disgorge, but the thing is that Disgorge would perform them much faster. The effect is of an album that feels like it should be speedier than it is, and the ravenous hunger for human flesh is pacified somewhat for it.
The dissection must go deeper.
The abdominal wall now; thick and threaded. Strokes with the practiced edge; the muscle parts, pliant and obedient, save for strings of tendon that yield only to a firmer hand. Second and third repeats of the album grant more reward; first sightings of slick viscera in the thick slams of “inebriated flesh”. Further practice in the butcher’s art of clinical pathology reveals more besides, catchy tremelo work in the initial sections of “period of atrocity” that had yet to metastasize in my mind on the initial hearing. Yet if additional spins reveal virtues they also clarify vices; the cymbals throughout are curiously sporadic and often very muted when do appear. Also, the spoken word
introductory track only feels more pointless over repeat sessions, and following it up with the first minute or so of “The Remained Lust” (the first real song on the album) being...more spoken word while the music slowly fades in is a weird, exasperating choice that kicks the album off in tedious style. It’s as if, instead of detonating like a tomahawk missile to the eardrums, the album is sort of just content to sneak into your awareness like it’s late for class and didn’t want to make a scene when it entered.
Invigorated yet cautious, we slice ever deeper.
At last, the slithering entrails, veined and spooled like a flayed serpent. See how they glisten and shine, luminescent in the pale glower of the naked bulb hung above like some voyeur star to an autopsy. I’m a sucker for audible, distinct bass, and “Congenital Depravity” slakes that thirst with a rotund bottom end that actually somewhat brought Korn to mind in the way the bass twangs away underneath. Lethal, if somewhat boilerplate brutal death chromatic riffs mesh and intertwine with malign , chugging grooves, “Perpetual Dismemberment” in particular being a good example with it’s chunky subterranean beatdown towards the close. The album grows on me like a tumour. Hooks in “Period of Atrocity” that left nary a scratch upon first acquaintance now thud through my flesh, resolute and immobile – the descending higher register notes vs ascending lower register notes on the chorus and darting snake tremelo on the second riff of the song being particularly worthy examples. I still wish it was a little faster, and perhaps the album would have a little more immediacy if it did ease on the brake a little, but I can’t be as readily dismissive of the work here as I was on my first playthrough any longer.
The examination complete, the blood pooled and still, the diagnosis finally possible. I like this album. Much more so now that it’s had a fair shot at an appraisal. Still, it wouldn’t do to overstate the case – “Congenital Depravity” is a good modern brutal death album. It’s nimble fretwork and slams, gravel-throated bellows and percussive assault are stock for the genre but potent nonetheless, even if I’m not about to reach for it over, say, this year’s Brodequin album. The thing with brutal death is that it’s so relentless, such an escalation in relation to even it’s parent genre, that it can turn off even people who are into extreme metal. Fair enough. Each to their own. But if you do have the taste for music this abrasive, then you could certainly do worse than “Congenital Depravity”.
