(Here, DGR devotes about 1400 words to extolling the virtues of Carrion Vael‘s newest album, which is out now on Unique Leader Records.)
There was a period maybe five or six years ago where a band like Carrion Vael would’ve found a good handful of compatriots within their current label home of Unique Leader Records. Their brand of high-speed melodeath, light implementing of symphonics to help break up the constantly whirring lead guitar, and tech-death hybridization has gone under a few names throughout the years – even cheekily referred to around here once as ‘black dahlia murder-core’ – but there was one pretty distinct carrier of that strain of metal, and at the time many of those groups would’ve been ensconced within the loving brutal bosom of Unique Leader.
However, things changed and something interesting happened within real time as the label’s priorities seemed to shift, favoring the low-and-slow approach of many up-and-coming deathcore groups, or leaning heavily into the brutal deathcore monstrosities that were being born out of former brutal death and gore-focused bands.
Nowadays the label is a tri-headed monstrosity of its own and many of the groups who were playing the high-speed, highly-technical style found a home in labels like The Artisan Era – whose own bands like Inferi found themselves leading the charge in recruitment – and Willowtip seems plenty happy to cast their net in those waters as well.
What’s interesting about this is that upon hearing Cannibals Anonymous for the first time, you’ll be plenty familiar with the stylistic flair and talents of the Richmond, Indiana based metal band: they’d fit perfectly well alongside a group like Alterbeast, Symbolik, or Arkaik – yet in a strange way it feels like a little bit of a throwback. Less overt brutality, not as heavily zeroed-in on nuking the ground, and quite melodically minded. Carrion Vael feel like a throwback for Unique Leader on their fourth album, hearkening back to the high-speed tech-death era of the label and standing out quite a bit among their peers because of it.
The tale of the tape makes Cannibals Anonymous an easy album to understand. Carrion Vael have placed eight songs on the album’s plate and you can safely assume that all eight of those are going to be some of the most densely-packed songs out there, well in line with the group’s mentioned in previous paragraphs here. That means you can expect a wall of virtioustic guitar playing, sweeping background synths, high-speed drumming (enough that you start to wonder if the gentleman behind the kit has long passed marathon length by song five), and a rhythm section replete with hefty rumble.
Anticipating all of this at a velocity-worshipping clip that could set landspeed records at times, and with a trident-pronged vocal approach, and you have a pretty swell idea of what Cannibals Anonymous has in store for you in its multiple threads of murders, cannibalism, and otherworldly chaos.
Carrion Vael waste little time either. It may seem like opener “In Words Of Grimm” is going to be another scene-setting opener that softly welcomes you behind the album’s curtain, yet the band quickly scorch that introduction to dust with an intricately woven opening section that only descends back to those opening ‘soft’ moments after it’s already driven enough piles into the dirt that you could build a bridge on them. It’s an impressive opener but also makes the statement of just what musical sandbox Carrion Vael are going to be ‘accidentally’ kicking over other people’s castles in.
Cannibals Anonymous mostly dances between the four-to six minute range in its songs, the six-minute ones coming across exponentially weighty given that Carrion Vael don’t bother with the slowing down part of things in order to gain that extended song-length. They just pack it with more ‘stuff’. Cannibals Anonymous is one of those classic ‘-core’ style albums wherein every musician is already operating at such an insanely high-level that you’re partly donning the ole’ Indiana Jones hat and going spelunking within each song in order to discover how many different threads the group have going within a song.
For instance, “Love Zombie” whipped right by the first handful of times it was listened to – still coasting on the already high clouds set by the intro and the following battering that is “Discount Meats”, but it has slowly morphed into one of the standout songs here and only partially because it is one of the shorter numbers. The other credit for that goes to the divebombing guitar solo that “Love Zombie” contains, one of a handful of times wherein you think you have a good idea of what is happening as the vocals are rattling off at a percussive pace and you’re enjoying an old-fashioned chug-fest only to then get walloped by a screaming guitar coming in from the left speaker. It’s a hell of a firework to set off in the middle of a song and has made “Love Zombie” into a slow-ascender to highlight song versus the immediacy coming from the brawler that is the aforementioned “Discount Meats”.
“Augustas Dead” spins up the apocalypse machine for a little bit in its opener, sealing the fate of the two beefier songs before it. “Savage Messiah” and “Pins And Needles” both being the six-minute heavyweights of Cannibals Anonymous provide so much room and opportunity for Carrion Vael to offer up guitar segment after segment that they almost can’t help themselves. “Savage Messiah” stays true to that form by dishing up enough that the plate underneath it likely folded in half while being carried to its recipient, cycling back around and around on that opening verse enough to make somebody dizzy.
Carrion Vael add a little atmospheric work to the song as well – it is already one of the longer numbers on the album, why not make it one of the biggest as well? It’s in the two six-minute tracks where you can truly understand why they might be drawing comparisons to Malcolm Pugh and team over in the Inferi side of the musical sphere, though the band themselves would seemingly be just as happy with the consistent Black Dahlia Murder comparison that might come out of a track like “You Die Either Way” near the end of the album.
At least, it is now made clear why “Augustas Dead” chooses to have the ‘immolating the planet’ style opener before it transforms itself into another high-speed nailgun of a song, since it has two heftier numbers before it that would already qualify as EP status for some other groups. Not on Cannibals Anonymous though; they just get to be the centerpiece of an album that has already sent many a writer looking for words comparable to ‘smorgasbord’.
It’s strange to think of Cannibals Anonymous like this, yet four albums deep into their career and Carrion Vael have found themselves playing a surprisingly classic form of tech-death nowadays. They’ve struck upon a pure vein and are now conceivably part of a second-to-third generation group of musicians who could play circles around just about anybody and do so blindfolded. There’s fun to be had with this release, given that it never really lets up, but this is also one of a class where you need to prep yourself for the journey because even though there’s only eight songs present, those eight could put cracks in a house’s foundation if dropped too hard.
It’s impressive that Carrion Vael have found a way to still keep the journeyman wanderings of the million-note guitar solo, high-speed rattle-can drumming, and the heaven and hell slaughtering vocal style interesting. Much could be said about the strength of songcraft in that aspect; that even though Cannibals Anonymous could – granted, this is after years upon years of musical nerdery that could’ve otherwise accomplished sending someone to the moon – be dissected piece by piece with every gear and cog exposed, blueprint analyzed and laid bare, and the man behind the curtain scared into a nearby county, you’re still likely to have a really good time here.
The songs remain speedy and intact with some perfectly placed guitar work right where it is needed to keep you constantly going ‘oh shit’ from time to time and intrigued by where the band may go next. Carrion Vael may be mis-aligned as a melodeath group but what they are is absolutely killer.
https://uniqueleaderrecords.bandcamp.com/album/cannibals-anonymous
https://www.facebook.com/CarrionVael/