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7.5
By now thirty years after their foundation, the sublime cadaveric decomposition return with what, on balance, is their most ambitious and structured work: “The macabre Voodoo Messiah of Masochism and Fetishism”. A kilometer title that is all a program, but which reveals a now complete sound evolution, the result of a long, coherent and without compromised path.
From the dawn Goregrind, in the smell of first Carcass and Dead infection, the group has gradually refined its stylistic arsenal, landing on a rather technical, angular Death-Grind, where an undoubted heat remains central, being channeled into medium articulated compositions, with structures that do not fear to dare.
To a ferocious and unwatched attitude – with the gurgling double vocal attack that remains the main point of contact with the work of the beginnings – a certain lucidity has therefore been joined in the composition, for a sound that can now also give life to episodes such as “My Spintria to the PsychopompiP” – in which the Black Metal echoes are evident – or “The Mutineers of the PHLEGETHON (THE Suttees in the Harems of Beelzebub) “and” Son of the Beast (Baphomet's Tomahawk) “, where riffs inspired by the most twisted and labyrinthine soft angels seem almost to pop out of nowhere.
The sublime Cadaveric decomposition now seem to be a band that perfectly knows the dynamics of the extreme, and that is not afraid of touching more dark and less canonical territories. On closer inspection, the Parisian group has always had contacts with a certain malignant and militant fringe, having shared musicians in the past with realities such as Antaeus or Arkhon Inausus, therefore certain particularly dark drifts perhaps should not be amazed.
The Gore component, once pervasive and central, therefore survives almost exclusively in the texts and titles, which continue to flirt with the most obscene and disturbing imagination, but the music now moves on more mature tracks. Aggression remains a constant, but becomes less blind, more reasoned, as if the original destructive impulse had left room for a more stratified awareness.
We are therefore in the presence of a Death-Grind album that in its most dynamic moments could be combined with the first ABORTED, while many other episodes affect with a verve and with solutions that are not so far from Death-Black environments.
In all this, there is no shortage of situations in which the band seems to oscillate between the desire to renew itself and the risk of laying on formulas already tested. Some passages compact on themselves, letting a certain repetitiveness emerge which, however, seems almost intentional: a ritual, claustrophobic reiteration, rather than a lack of inspiration. In this sense, “The Macabre Voodoo Messiah of Masochism and Fetishism” appears as a work that works for accumulation, rather than for synthesis: a continuous stratification of details, suggestions and drifts, which ends up creating a deliberately oppressive sound mixture.
Not a turning point, therefore, but rather a significant stop within a constant evolution. The sublime Cadaveric decomposition still show themselves capable of digging in their sound and in its expressive possibilities, choosing to do it with rigor, without concessions. The result is a severe sound disc that sediment, leaving behind a sense of hostility difficult to dissipate.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
