vote
7.0
- Bands:
CARNOSUS - Duration: 00:40:10
- Available from: 10/18/2024
- Label:
-
Willowtip Records
Streaming not yet available
Death metal is probably one of the subgenres of our favorite music with the most faithful and assiduous following: it is in some respects noteworthy to see the ways in which a relatively little-known band like the Swedish Carnosus, born in 2011, has been able to secure a contract with Willowtip Records following the notable success of his second album entitled “Visions Of Nihility”, released independently last year and recently withdrawn thanks to a new edition edited by the same record label that today offers us the new “Wormtales”.
These are certainly not unknown dynamics in the field of technical death metal – just think for example of the great interest recently aroused in the relevant public by our own Miscreance, who despite moving on different coordinates have received excellent feedback in ways similar to what occurred precisely for the Carnosus themselves.
One could assume that consistency and discipline have played a strong role in the path of our band, where the regularity in the publication of promotional videos and instrumental playthroughs online has allowed the band to effectively demonstrate to the public their technical and executive skills at the service of a death metal, son of his more distinctly technical and at times progressive inclination, chronologically placeable roughly in the second half of the 2000s.
The brand new “Wormtales” develops for forty minutes on ten compositions of variable duration, ranging between the scant three minutes of the second “Within Throat, Within Heart” and the six minutes of “Solace In Soil”, placed at the end of the album. Although moving in a technical and progressive field, the compositions are very intelligible and dynamic, generally comparable to what has been done by bands such as Revocation, Arsis or fellow countrymen Anata, without forgetting a certain melodic vein of Schuldinerian memory found for example in some sections of the fourth piece “Yearnings of A Rotten Spine”, among the most dynamic, varied and successful songs on the album – also thanks to certain references to Obscura on “Cosmogenesis”.
The compositions are generally very balanced from an instrumental point of view, also thanks to a suitable and absolutely high-quality production: we never witness intrusive and paroxysmal insertions of interventions capable of suffocating the performance of the pieces, whereas the solos – both guitar and bass, as demonstrated for example by the fifth track “Worm Charmer” – follow one another in a regular and rather easy manner, without therefore disturbing or being cloying. There is also no shortage of references to Morbid Angel in more telluric and grim episodes, found in the drum arrangements of the sixth piece “Harbinger Of Woundism” or in the main riff of the ninth “Cosmoclaustrum”, another particularly successful episode for a tracklist that generally flows in a rather pleasant and free of significant obstacles.
An exceptional consideration should perhaps be made instead for the singing of the good Jonatan Karasiak: effective and rather varied in the use of different growl and scream tones and also willing to experiment with tones with a more ceremonial flavour, as demonstrated by the aforementioned “Solace In Soil”, Karasiak's scream is sometimes a little too present, sometimes appearing excessively pounding and at times disorienting.
Carnosus' third album is more generally a good technical death metal album with a not too modern flavor which however suffers significantly from a certain quotationism; although not a fundamental consideration for the purpose of appreciating the music of the Swedish band, it is impossible not to immediately notice the references cited throughout the duration of “Wormtales”, even if these elements were combined in a certainly effective and functional way to writing the pieces. We are certain that this consideration, however, will not represent a big problem for fans of the sounds in question and in particular of the bands mentioned, to whom we undoubtedly recommend listening to the new Carnosus album in the certainty of finding elements of their own interest.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM