Devourment - Unleash The Carnivore

Far too many people complain that brutal death bands are no different from death metal bands, and all they do is blast and thrash along to the sounds of unreasonable growls and squeals from the vocalist. Some even go on to think that the sound rather resembles gurgles! What they don't seem to get is that that's the entire point of being a brutal death outfit at a first place. After all brutal death is a very primordial genre that doesn’t revolve around the most technical riffs or the gentle melodies one can come with. In fact all it demands is to create compositions which upon listening would compel us to brutal, mindless, chest thumping behavior comparable to that of cavemen and neandrathals, which is otherwise unexplainable to others not into it.

Devourment's Unleash The Carnivore is one such album that follows all those unwritten rules of creating a true brutal death album. The album brings a new lease of life to the band after their somewhat disappointing previous work Butcher The Weak. They succeed at taking the abstracts of death metal out of the comfortable mind and violently throwing them into a primal and nasty environment. There is nothing to illuminate on regarding the riffs, percussion, or gutturals (although Mike Majewski and un-jailed Ruben Rosas deliver truly destructive vocal performances), but that is the point. There is not much to distract from the streamlined agenda of churning brutal slamming sounds these eight tracks propagate.

Right from the track Unleash The Carnivore to Fed To The Pigs, the unrelenting environment the album creates is very clearly visible. Just listening to the tracks provokes you to let out an extremely visceral physical response, implying the purposeful use of the brutality by the band. Deflesh The Abducted carries the signature growling grooves amidst the constant hi-hat rolls, making it a very phenomenal piece of composition. The gorifying frenzy of the blastbeats with deadly riffs continues on till the abominable Over Her Dead Body, where it takes a rather weird diversion although a likeable one. The breakdown in the song has almost no transition yet feels totally natural and the spastic parts are oddly effective despite seeming random to the ears. And yet the album ends on a vicious manner, marking the return of brutal form that is Devourment.

Unleash The Carnivore is not meant for that bunch of metalcore fans who are always sticking their point of brutal death being the most pointless genre into their butt. Right from the word go, Devourment’s latest offering is a dream come true for all those brutal death fans, who pray for that golden album amidst all that mediocre works other bands come up with in the name of brutal death. It’s insanely heavy amidst all those brutal gurgles and growls, surpassing its entire previous works in every regards. And if things still don’t stand brutal enough then the artwork by the legendary Dan Seagrave is sure to drive the point to your brain.