7 Types of Stool

This album is an effort of a Dutch band that once was called Cythraul. "Growing Insanity" was quite un-quirky, boring EP that had no real highlights and was just a test run, but nothing has come into physical format ever since. Until 2015. The band kind of resurrected under the name Cacatory. And in 2020 they felt confident enough to release the album "7 Types of Stool". No lyrics are in public domain, so there's nothing about lyrics (of Leon Noё's poetical effort) that I can analyze thoroughly, but the song titles suggest that this is a concept work about hangover and alcohol abuse. And wooden closet suggests also that this alcohol's quality was neglected often to save money for the studio sessions, if a band eventually came across the "built for the deed" place so secluded. The contents of the album don't feel and smell like you'd think, but more like bland, pun intended, surgical steel used to operate the poor beer drinker's liver.

The sound feels a bit distillated and overall not very appealing. And the songwriting sounds way too much like Heartwork to look deeper into it. Heartless? Not so completely. But quite unoriginal? Indeed. Melodic elements are not shocking or fascinating, but the solos are quite decent sometimes - drastic improvement from the 2001 EP release. Thinking about specific places of interest, there's, well, maybe, "Dipsomaniac" riffs or some faster-paced interludes. But still, it feels a lot duller around other music that feels like labored Carcass mimicry. Drumming work of Ilja Platvoet (Flat-foot, what a surname for a death metal drummer, huh?) is fine, unless you remember the existence of studio metronome. Only live bootleg I've found contains very subtle mistakes, though. Vocals of Lars de Ryuter is another huge factor that makes the album worse - they feel like a simple attempt to copy Jeff Walker's Heartwork style vox, as if there's need to cater to Carcass like they're all gone and can't show you their own newest. And this feeling won't let you go until the end of this 27-minute album. And thinking about it an hour later, there won't be any moments to remember, at very least, the ones that weren't "This place is too Carcass-esque!". The sound, well... I've mentioned it already, and finally, it's something that really contrasts with Carcass' MDM works. It's a bit more foggy. Like it's really a hangover. But for me it's way more of a flaw, and I must say that this element doesn't complement the album's idea as much as Cacatory thought.

40% - like a fine Russian vodka, even though I'll be damned if I ever in my life drink any alcohol at all. If you're not a die hard alcohol enjoyer and if you have way more interesting albums to check out, safely ignore this release as there's no big deal of attention-worthy music you'd miss. If you're a big Carcass fan and if you tend to like this type of melodic death metal more than In Flames' soapy metal chops, you can take a sip out of it, even though you won't find anything REALLY interesting there.