### Cerebral Effusion: Impulsive psychopathic acts

#### 28/04/14 || The Duff

Cerebral Effusion are a Spanish band that are very heavy, on first listens very inaccessibly so but the more time you give “Impulsive Psychopathic Acts” the more you will realise the subtlety of the hooks, and although you will feel smarter for liking this almost literal blur of noise such is the talent of the band – the songwriting is actually very creative and things will take hold almost imperceptibly so despite its seemingly generic, repetitive nature.

Fans of their earlier stuff might bemoan the evidently less catchy standard of the music, but here the importance is in the arrangements, the energy and flow, particularly Eihar’s drumming – most drummers are either pushed back or brought to the fore, yet on “Impulsive Psychopathic Acts”, a first for me in a death metal band I’ve noticed bandmembers playing all in line with each other pretty much consistently, yet his performance seems the most demanding of everyone’s when the Cerebral Effusion riffs are sledge-hammer and very rarely tricky but merely at speed.

Eihar performs with what sounds like an absence of triggers – there is certainly an immeasurably masterful infrequency in terms of the intensity of each beat; what I mean by that is for someone playing so furiously, most of it seems to be trying to hit each beat exactly the same without any help and getting pretty damn close to it. Also of note is the lack of tremolo riffing, most being of the Disgorge onslaught blasting intermingled with furiously speedy power chords (or fifths, as the case may be) and finger gymnastics about the fifth and sixth strings much like “She Lay Gutted” – variation on this record is at a minimum, but thankfully hence there are only seven tracks total.

The band are also no strangers to a sense of humor, but given their home dialect, it is difficult to know where the jokes begin and end. The second track, “Homophobic Indiscriminate Violation” is pretty poignant stuff, broken English aside. At first it made me assume one of the band members may have been gay such is their deep understanding of intolerance, but as it progresses, you genuinely think that this is some serious hatred going on – not since Cannibal Corpse’s “Fucked With a Knife” has death metal so beautifully interwoven with the tragedy of our dehumanizing populaces and the oppression of gender and sexuality, the guiding fundamental to our very essence.

“Into Morbid Obesity”?

Someone in Cerebral Effusion is a genius.

At seven tracks, closer over six minutes long and everything else a dizzying four minutes plus, the record actually flows, there are no real favourite tracks but rather moments. There are sadly some lackadaisical sections that although in the context of the whole album I suppose I can warm to but three speed variations of the same riff, sounds like lazy song-writing to me no matter how intense the identifying pinch harmonic from the rest of the chugs; this is a minor quibble, like a woman into blowjobs and pegging.

Finally, the new record due out this year on new Standard Elite is black-blue/green; need I remind you bands that have gone from red-orange/pink to black-blue/green only to release death metal milestones? Inherit Disease. Guttural Secrete. Defeated Sanity. Condemned. Disgorge. That’s it. That is enough.

In my search for exceptional brutal death metal bands, none have surpassed Disgorge, Guttural Secrete nor Defeated Sanity, but outfits like Condemned, Inherit Disease and now Cerebral Effusion come close; there is something just different enough about them while taking on board the very essence of what makes an album like “Consume the Forsaken” unsurpassed even to this day – they get the balance of aggression and finesse just right when hammering out the technique can only get a band so far.

- Information
- Released: 2010
- Label: Comatose Music
- Website: Portal Facebook
- Band
- Cosme: vocals, bass
- Peñas: guitars
- Jabo: guitars
- Eihar: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Humiliation Through Methodical Submission
- 02. Homophobic Indiscriminate Violation
- 03. Into Morbid Obesity
- 04. Epidemic of the Era
- 05. Psychotic Compositor
- 06. Last Torture Preferment
- 07. Absolute Excrement