### Cephalic Carnage: Misled by certainty

#### 18/10/10 || The Duff

Cephalic Carnage have been a force to be reckoned with – since their gritty, sludge-doom-grind manicfest “Exploiting Dysfunction”, featuring guest-vocals from none other than stoner stalwart and pained-man extraordinaire Kirk Windstein, the band has evolved with every effort, tightening, shortening, upping the tech and generally speeding up on “Lucid Interval”; they became more streamlined, playful, less full-on with the multi-faceted yet generally disappointedly received “Anomalies”, and then came about face with “Xenosapien”, mixing the songcraft maturity and abundance of influences from its immediate predecessor with the more serious undertones of earlier efforts. Welcome to “Xenosapien 2”, baby, the sixth album from Cephalic Carnage and as far as I can tell the only one that has sweet fuck all to offer on a developmental scale.

My review of “Xenosapien” was less than favourable, but in time the effort grew on me far more than predicted; to many it seemed a revitalising of the band’s sound while keeping the most alluring aspects of a misunderstood “Anomalies”, although such an outlook seems to have presently been lost amidst popular, uptight and hardcore opinion – it’s all a bucketload of shit, now, apparently. Whatever detractors who yearn for a return to a more chaotic “Lucid Interval”-era sound, the fact is on “Xenosapien” the band had aced their songwriting and released a fantastic, groovy, sinister concoction of music, merging the sounds of their death/grind roots with inspirations spurned by, let’s face it, cunts, specifically slow, droning and sludgy akin to bands like Neurosis and Minsk.

“Misled By Certainty” repeats the formula of class songcraft with absurd technicality and yet makes it sound even more comfortable – it’s the tightness of the arrangements that make “Misled By Certainty” more standout than its immediate predecessor, even though I find it to be less of a varied, stout effort (shoot me in the dick if I didn’t say I wanted more concrete riffing after my initial appraisal of “Xenosapien“… on second thoughts, don’t shoot me in the dick). Greater focus has been spent on the riff, of which every track boasts at least two that are standard, memorable and crushing, complementary to the extreme but manageable tech-madness built around them.

The album does lag slightly towards the end as the material becomes more outstretched, and one also gets the impression that no risks are being taken – there is a shocking number of times that I’m reminded of something that has come before in the CC discography. It’s not that there’s zero growth, the newest and most noticeable additions being the wealth of guest-vocalists and the influence their respective styles have brought to the table, such as the spaced-out industrial tone of “Dimensional Modulation”. Also of note is the return of slotting in short, to-the-point grind tracks, a nod towards the lusted after “Lucid Interval” and “Exploiting Dysfunction” sound, although kept altogether far tidier as if just reminders of their roots.

Production is a little modern for my liking, slick as all fuck, but one aspect that comes out tremendously is the guttural vocals of Lenzig Leal, which sound unstoppably monstrous. The musicianship I shan’t dwell on, the guys are practiced to say the least and I’m sure just as proficient as any tech-deathsters only very obstinate in having fun all the fucking time – the spits and splutters of humour such as the closer, black metal parody that indicates the band has far from surrendered its taste for “Dying Will Be the Death of Me”-style pisstaking. The true closer finds us back with lengthy epics akin to “Ontogeny of Behaviour” off “Anomalies”, although less extreme, mixing Baroness, Mastodon and The Ocean with dreamy-Minsk and sealing the deal good and proper, a satisfying affair indeed mixing the extreme with the cool very perceptively.

- Information
- Released: 2010
- Label: Relapse Records
- Website: Cephalic Carnage MySpace
- Band
- Lenzig Leal: vocals
- Steve Goldberg: guitars
- John Merryman: drums
- Nick Schendzielos: bass, vocals
- Brian Hopp: guitars

- Tracklist
- 01. The Incorrigible Flame
- 02. Warbots A.M.
- 03. Abraxas of Filth
- 04. Pure Horses
- 05. Cordyceps Humanis
- 06. Raped by an Orb
- 07. P.G.A.D.
- 08. Dimensional Modulation Transmography
- 09. Ohrwurm
- 10. When I Arrive
- 11. Power and Force
- 12. A King and a Thief
- 13. Repangaea
- 14. Aeyeuchg!