Album Review: Sarkasm - Carnival Of Atrocities
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
I think I’ll go to my grave convinced that the Rob Dukes era of Exodus was underrated. “The Atrocity Exhibition: Exhibit A” was my first album by them, so fine, my glasses are about as rose tinted as they can get, but even so – some of the tracks on that release are magnificent. “Children of a Worthless God”? “Iconoclasm”? “Bedlam 1-2-3”? these cuts are lethal, weapons-grade thrash metal, and no attempts at counterargument I’ve yet heard have swayed me a micron from that conviction. Partly it’s the production. It seems custom-engineered for the most scathing chugging yet created by man, bespoke for the dispensation of palm-muted justice. It’s something that hooks me immediately, that classic thrash chug. It makes me a lanky, greasy teen again, just discovering the classics of yesteryear and elbow dropping my stuffed gorilla teddy from inadvisable altitude. It’s a deeply nostalgic thing, and every now and then, I’ll hear an album that seems to mine that rich ore seam once more. Enter Sarkasm. They’re not exactly fresh faces, having had their start back in the ancient days of yore in 1990, but that’s not to say they’ve got the most voluminous back catalogue in the world - “Carnival of Atrocities” represents only their second full length. To be fair they’ve spent most of the time since 1990 split up, but that said, men tend to mellow with time. I found myself looking at fucking slippers on Amazon the other day. Has the same unfortunate fate befallen Sarkasm?
Praise the lord, it would seem not. On the contrary, they’ve adopted a marvellous thrash infused approach that delivers platter after platter of kingly riffs rammed with seismic rage down your throat. It’s hard to overstate how hard this motherfucker chugs; “Cold Empty Rooms” drops into this positively rambunctious spate of low-string abuse at 33 seconds with a chug that took my head off my shoulders. But really, most songs here are bulging with horrifically heavy groove riffs, and Sarkasm are dexterous enough to ensure that while the actual riffs are fairly simple in terms of how you’d play them, they’re long and elaborately structured overall. “Murmurs From the Void” for example – that introductory riff isn’t an overly challenging piece to nail overall, but it’s comprised of three separate parts – A, B, and C, with the riff overall being structured as A, B, A, C. It’s a beast of a riff too, and when the drums stoop into a glowering homunculus of a beat to accentuate the natural swing of it at 0.56, it’s positively incendiary. I think this is what I’m enjoying most about the release really – it absolutely nails the foundation basics of thrash, and proves adept at arranging them in such a way as to consistently deliver infectious, punishing beatdowns every time.
Another thing that has me feeling that Sarkasm lean a lot more on their thrash than their death inclinations is the vocals. Bruno Bernier is intelligible by the standards of harsh vocal performances, and really wouldn’t go amiss in a band like modern day Exodus either. He enunciates well and honestly isn’t too many light years removed from someone like Tom Angelripper of Germanic stalwarts Sodom. The key to the rest of the band seems to be just how well they gel together – special mention has to go to Simon Thibodeau behind the kit; it’s not like he’s chucking out the most convoluted beats in the world, but everything he does carves the rest of the band into a solid cliff face, pinning down grooves and uplifting transitions with tasteful fills. He stakes the band in place, leaning heft into the haymakers while keeping the jabs flighty and nimble. “Hateful, Spiteful, Vengeful” oscillates between tempos frequently (as do a lot of these tracks) and the way Simon flips between patterns and shunts one section into another locks the songs together so cleanly. While not the speediest thing you’ll ever hear, Sarkasm do still remember where the gas pedal is and are happy enough to floor it from time to time, and it’s here that the death metal elements of their sound creep to the fore. It’s still more a thrash album than a death one, but even so, the repugnant tremolo of tracks like “I am Chaos” and “Dead Weight” speak of a foot well in the grave as well. There’s even the odd slam death section! Temper your expectations obviously, they don’t turn into Abominable Putridity on you, but even so, that old Suffocation charm is present and leering at you from the terminus of ill-lit tunnels miles below.
I think the biggest counterpoint to all the above positivity is the solos; they’re present but not exactly overawing. I wouldn’t go so far as to call them perfunctory, but they’re certainly workmanlike and very basic on the whole. They tend to emphasise melody over overt technicality, which is fine, but like…you can have both, and while I wouldn’t suggest going for overwrought string histrionics for their own sake, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that a bit more flashiness would go a long way to alleviating the quotidian, “there-because-they-have-to-be” feel of the solo work in general. Obviously, some of the material is stronger than other bits – it’s not a bad song exactly, but “Disintegrate” is for me the runt of the letter - the chorus riff lacks a little punch, being for most part just chord/chug/chord/chug rinse and repeat fare. Is the album a bit too similar to Slayer in some places? Yeah, probably, but it’s also a metric tonne more engaging than Slayer have been in a hot minute now, so much so that it almost feels as though they’ve wholesale nicked the modern Slayer template and polished the absolute shit out of it.
A one word review for this would just be “fun”. I’ve listened to it a hundred times, and it’s yet to lose it’s shine. I’d like to see them up the speed and complexity of the lead work, and they are ultimately playing within a very well established box, but there’s no arguing with results. If you’re looking for a mildly deathly modern thrash album with killer riffs and composition, look no further.
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