OUR LIST OF 2016’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 15): CENTINEX, ABNORMALITY, VOLTURYON

 

For the 15th installment in our Most Infectious Song series I decided to create a death metal immersion, with three songs that all have old school flavors, the first most strongly of all, but are all different from each other in interesting ways, too. I’ll also mention that all three of these tracks were recommendations from my comrade DGR, who has a thing about speed and a certain kind of drumwork, although a couple of these songs were also on my own list of candidates that grew as 2016 rolled along.

For those who might be joining this rollout only now, you can browse the previous 14 parts by clicking this link.

CENTINEX

After eight albums going back to 1992’s Subconscious Lobotomy and a dozen shorter releases, Sweden’s Centinex disbanded in 2006 — but they crawled out of their grave in 2014 and released a comeback album named Redeeming Filth, which was a hell of a comeback. And I put a deliciously morbid track from that album (“Moist Purple Skin”) on my 2014 Most Infectious Song list. In 2016 they released a killer follow-up with Doomsday Rituals, which is the source of the first song in this installment of the 2016 list.

 

 

The photo above is one I took when Centinex played at last year’s edition of Maryland Deathfest. Their set was powerful, decimating, and a complete blast to hear. About a month after that fest, DGR turned in a review of Doomsday Rituals that included these words:

“Centinex have a sort of earnestness in how they approach their branch of the festering death metal tree — it is basically so red meat that it couldn’t possibly get more rare without being still attached to the animal. You know where the band are going pretty much from moment one, and by moment five you at least know exactly what you are in for.”

DGR noted that, by comparison to the mid-tempo grinders that made up Redeeming Filth, on Doomsday Rituals the band stepped on the accelerator more, and one of those more up-tempo tracks is the next song I’m adding to our list, “Sentenced to Suffer“. The central riff in this song buries a meat hook right in the listener’s head and then proceeds to shake it. Highly addictive.

https://agoniarecords.bandcamp.com/album/doomsday-rituals
http://www.facebook.com/agoniarecords

 

 

 

 

 

 

ABNORMALITY

Abnormality have been around since their first demo hit in 2007, and 2012’s Contaminating the Hive Mind was a real gem. But with the backing of Metal Blade, their 2016 follow-up Mechanisms of Omniscience elevated their profile significantly, affording the big breakthrough that the band had earned. DGR reviewed this album for us, as he did the other two in this post, and I’ll excerpt these words about the song I’m adding to our list today:

“‘Vigilant Ignorance‘, the aforementioned epic song, is firmly ensconced as Mechanism’s centerpiece, as the six-minute run-time allows the band to move through a variety of different machinations in one track. They shift from their standard motif of insanely fast into some grinding guitar work, and some super-low growl sections for the times when the words “vigilant ignorance” are mentioned — as if they were being summoned from the depths. The sudden stop in the song in between two quick-moving segments is a nice touch and a fun break that spills into a catchy note-laden riff that seems to lie somewhere between guitar segment and finger exercise.”

For a song that’s frequently just berserk, it’s really addictive, and not just because of its swarming groove — wait for the dizzying snare attack just before the 2:00 mark, and the dizzying solo that begins around 3:00.

https://abnormality.bandcamp.com/album/mechanisms-of-omniscience
https://www.facebook.com/AbnormalityOfficial

 

 

 

 

 

 

VOLTURYON

Yes, DGR also reviewed Volturyon’s new album Cleansed By Carnage for us, including this summing up:

“Cleansed By Carnage is perfectly positioned to grab quite a few new listeners. It takes an excellent EP and does a damned fine job of expanding that into a full release, really nailing down just how good this collection of musicians is. The production work is solid and low-end-heavy, which comes across gloriously through the ten songs of jackhammer death on the album. That they’ve hinted at already working on new stuff is terrifying, because the salvo on Cleansed By Carnage is enough to send some metalheads to the doctor with sore necks for some time.”

DGR devoted two whole paragraphs to just one song, which not surprisingly is the one I picked for this list — because it really is a hell of a song:

“I think the best song on Cleansed By Carnage may be the last track before the group’s cover song. “The Capital Of Perverse Punishment” is a rhythmic hellstorm of a song that is part fraternal twin of “Pile Of Human” and part natural evolution of the songs on Human Demolition. It has pretty much all of Volturyon in tandem doing a surgical strike of rhythm-heavy guitar groove and utter drum destruction — the pattern making up the “Punishment!” segment of the song that is the chorus is especially fun.

“It’s a beefy track too: A solid mid-tempo section makes up the song’s back half and goes for full doom and death in its closer. “Perverse Punishment” is just a wall of booming bass and drums, with a guitar regiment reinforcing its war upon the listener. It, like many of the songs on Cleansed By Carnage, is a hell of a headbanger, but it is the track that feels the most constructed and dynamic, so I have found that it works the best. Aside from its lyrical niceties, the song is the most well-rounded track on Cleansed. Instead of going for the blast-heavy nightmare that some of the songs create, where the listener leaves with whiplash, or the sewage-groove grossness of the more traditional Swede-death, “Perverse Punishment” ties all of those elements into a very nice, hellscape-drawing, song.”

Enjoy “Capital of Perverse Punishment” below.

http://vicisolumrecords.com/album/cleansed-by-carnage
https://www.facebook.com/Volturyon/