Album Review: Carnivore Diprosopus - Rise of the Insurrection
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
Colombia. I don’t know if it’s coincidental that a place known for cocaine production makes some of the fastest death metal there is, but I’m glad for it either way. Internal Suffering. Mindly Rotten. Blaze inside. Carnal. For those benighted blastbeat addicts amongst us, besotted by sheer velocity alone, the Colombian death metal scene holds almost mythical status as the veritable apotheosis of speed and violence. Yet it wasn’t all a homogenous – if glorious – convocation of alacrity merchants; today under the microscope we have Carnivore Diprosopus, who lean more towards the slam side than do the bulk of their pestilential brethren. They’ve amassed a small but well regarded discography in the 20 or so years since they first slithered into the world; enough so that when I saw this, their fourth full-length, in the promo list I leapt at it like a cheetah on a wounded antelope. So, now that I hold it in my sallow palms, how is it?
Intro aside, we kick off with “Begin Redemption”. A mutant variant of the “Skull full of maggots” riff (you know the one), thick and crunchy to ease us in, and then...grace descends. Slams, girthy and inexorable as the biblical leviathan itself denature and reform my chromosomes. Fur sprouts, my brow slopes, my knuckles drag the floor. Facilities for language and higher cognition slip from me, replaced by primal, atavistic urges. Man’s simian ancestry reborn, I hurl furniture about the room in a search for the forest floor vegetation that forms the bulk of my diet henceforth. “Punishing” is a deeply familiar adjective when it comes to descriptions of metal, but in this case it happens to be true. Tempos shift into salvos of crippling grooves, playing off spritelier moments of finest home-grown Colombian blast devotion. Transitions are an underrated part of music, but you can have individually excellent elements within songs that nonetheless falter because the connective tissue binding them together is suspect. Carnivore Diprosopus though display no such weakness; there is a bit near the end of “Begin Redemption” where a series of palm mute chugs and a string bend segues smooth as cream into a tremelo n’ d-beat passage that is just pure OSDM justice.
One real song in, and already the slams have devolved me, as I knew they might. Yet the scope of my miscalculation was yet to be apparent in full; up next is “Dhamaneon”; a nasty burst of speed demonry amply spliced with the most judicious of palm muted thuggishness, only to up the ante by repeating an already thunderous riff at half time, fully disintegrating what will remain of your neck vertebrae. It’s outrageous. This is music to sprint through walls to. Which is what I do. Fully gorilla now, and possessed by insatiable lust for some lascivious waif of a lady ape, I body slam my way through the door, showering the world outdoors in splinters. Had some remnant of the man I once was made some fleeting, feeble attempt at reason? Whispered within me “no...just turn the handle”? I know not, and power forth towards a taxi, which waits with mounting terror.
“The battle of the saicasm” next. Choice morsels of fleet fingered fretboard fireworks just offshore of a Disgorge release in a sauce rich with that trademark Suffocation swing; in ¾ time, midpaced, triplets and deft work on the hi-hats. Succulent. Slam is often derided – not without cause, it must be said – as a dumb genre, for and by people with downtuned guitars, drum software, and IQs you barely need two hands to count. But it takes a knack to do it well, and thus far Carnivore Diprosopus have resoundingly demonstrated why the 11 years since their last release was worth it. They’ll transition riffs part by part, slickly varying chunks of it until the final riff is wholly distinct. It all feels so effortless in their hands, and I try to communicate as much to the taxi driver. “OOOOOOOGH” I grunt. “OOOOOOOOOOOOOOGH”. “AAAAAAH!” he replies. “FUCK”. And he springs out the car window, refusing – potentially unwisely – to open it first. His neck snaps like a stale tortilla and he crumples lifeless to the path outside in a glittering Hail of glass. Very well then, my gorilla brain hoots at me. I’ll drive myself.
It’s not that there aren’t tropes at play here; think you that I am some novice in the subtle arts of chromatic riff construction? Mere apprentice, grown fat and arrogant on the dilettante’s initial assumption of understanding in the face of men whom I know not to wield capacious minds of hadal depth? Nah. It’s just that when ‘The onslaught...cyborg tank division” closes out with an absolute jackhammer groove I can’t help but praise it, familiar as it’s components may be. It’s a triplet of two notes; low string, two of the first fret, then one on the open string, simple as it gets. But with that thunderous percussion behind it? I’m helpless before it. Additionally, considering that this song features Angel Ochoa (from a few things, but probably most prominently Abominable Putridity), it seems as apt a time as any to discuss the vocals. It’s an array of nauseating gurgles, growls and pig squeals, texturing the music wonderfully. There’s a occasional dry croaking noise he’ll do as well that sounds legitimately unhealthy, like we’re hearing this man’s death rattle but no one called an ambulance because it sounded tip top on playback. Vocals like this are an acquired taste obviously; if you’re not on board with the style then you won’t find yourself converted, but those of us who do like it will be very happy with the proceedings. Unlike my wife, who answers the phone. “Hello officer...gorilla stole a taxi? Hideous crash?...thousands dead you say? Yes, I know it’s not the first time. Yeah, it was when that last Devourment album dropped, I know, I know...Well yeah, I do try to keep him away from slam, but no one is perfect, and he did notice I got rid of his Cephalotripsy CD...yeah, I’m getting the tranquillisers, be there in a minute”.
We’re on the home stretch now; this is not a long album, in fact shorn of intro and bonus track it clocks in at less than 30 minutes. I’ve some misgivings about this; yes, quality over quantity, always, but still. Over a decade on from their last effort one could perhaps wish for more. By way of compensation for the stunted runtime, this is about the point where the album goes from “really good” to “fucking excellent”. “Khristov’s seventh eagle legion” lays down a carpet of soupy, grinding, gut-punch rhythms before locking everyone within 4 square miles into a permanent state of stank face at the 1.55 mark with a mean, low slung goregrind chug riff. There are even – heretical as it may be to say – perhaps even little flickers of nu metal influence on display in the ignorant swagger the song has here and there. It’s all so muscular, so meaty, so...substantial. There’s a physical force imparted upon you as this thing shunts your delicate sensibilities groundwards in a gross display of pure slam dominance. If only it was a touch more subtle, perhaps I would not be fleeing the scene of the mass flaming pileup I have caused, the screech of car alarms mixed in cacophonous uproar with the moans of the dying. I vault vehicles, frantic, confused, shouldering aside those few unfortunates who survived the initial vehicular massacre only to be pulverised by a fleeing silverback. Shots ring behind me, tranquiliser darts ricocheting off the caved in hood of a Dacia Sandero to my left. She’s here; she’s here and she stalks me like sick prey. Panicked, I charge for the only source of solace at hand; the skyscraper looming hundreds of floors high right in front of me.
“The refaim machine brigades”; penultimate in the tracklist proper, if you had thought the steam might be running low, you would be sorely yet thankfully mistaken. Instead, acceleration is in order. A siege of blastbeats bears forth a gurn inducing old-school Cryptopsy riff, all speedy powerchord transitions linked by ferocious slam breakdowns. The slower sections only hit the harder for the contrast with faster passages; this is scarce music at this point, it’s a hate campaign against your neck. It might not be obvious but I’m trying my darnedest to rake away with the finest comb I possess, but there simply aren’t that many nits to pick – I suppose on a personal level I’d have preferred more audible bass in the mix. I’m a sucker for a prominent bass, and while there are moments where the bass guitar is readily audible, generally it gets swamped in the overall downtuned maelstrom unfolding. This isn’t to say that the release sounds inadequate, far from it, but if I was to point to one alteration to make in order to send my acclaim truly stratospheric, it would be more discernable bass. Akin to the album, I too feel things moving into the endgame as I sit perched atop the skyscraper, cityscape a testament to man’s industrial prowess, that same prowess which vanished from me, spiralling into the ether beyond which even my apey digits may not reach. Biplanes bedevil me, their flight mocking me, for no matter how high I clamber, they shall soar higher still. Curse thee! I swat and flail, to no avail, and then...I see her. The rifle leveled, the sights trained, the target exposed. She shoots from the passenger seat of a passing biplane, and I feel the tranquilising cocktail seep into me even as my consciousness dulls and my grip falters. What strength I have left fails and slowly, inevitably, I begin to fall.
Throughout this album, as much as I’ve enjoyed it, there has been something missing. And I think I know what it is. To be sure, snippets have surfaced here and there, but...we’ve yet to go full Colombian. I knew what I was hoping for going into this final song. Wall to wall blasting. I could care less for subtlety and intricate song composition, just paste my brains against the wall like I stuck my head out a train window seconds before entering a tunnel. I’m not saying Carnivore Diprosopus heard my prayer. How could they have? And yet “Psycho mincer assault corpse” exists. I will accept no critique of this song, it does everything I want and is the perfect way to close things out, with an apoplectic hurricane of unbridled Latin American violence. It feels like the perfected version of the prior song, less inclined to slam worship and instead leaning more into outright barbarism. I love it, so deeply, so passionately, and it forms the blood-slathered cherry atop an album I am already head over heels for. When I wake, I am bedridden. The album over, my humanity has returned to me. The fur and fang receded, brutish arms reduced to their former dimensions, faculties for conversation and philosophising rejuvenated. And to what do I first turn once the capacity for reading is back where it belongs? Why, a contract of course. Under pain of divorce, incarceration, and a line of bereaved individuals who will nightly be permitted to form a queue to kick me in the balls, I am never again to consume Slam Death. I mull it over, reach my choice, and press the “play” button once more.
There is one more song; a bonus track called “Whore collector of testicles”. It’s very good, though I’d have taken more original material over it. In the final analysis, “Rise of the insurrection” slays. God it’s good, an emphatic statement that time may pass, but Carnivore Diprosopus are still apex predators in the slam scene. If you like brutal death you need – absolutely need – to get this in your ears by any means possible.
