You Owe You Pay

The statement in the title can be applied to any of Carnal Decay’s albums. What I’ve always found with Carnal Decay is their approach to brutal death metal is straightforward, consistent, and creative. Their particular style is much more stripped-down than many of the other acts you see these days. I would even say that Carnal Decay’s got some hardcore influence in their sound.

You Owe You Pay sees Carnal Decay keeping this style consistent, but they’ve made some major improvements to their overall product. For example: their first two albums (Carnal Pleasures and Chopping Off the Head) suffered from poor production, and that was fixed on On Top of the Food Chain. Then there was their lyrical style shift between Chopping and Food Chain, in which they quit the gore-based lyrics and focused more on overall, angry violence and murder.

And in the six years between all that and You Owe You Pay, I noticed Carnal Decay has taken two more massive steps up to perfecting their music.

The first of which being Michael Kern’s vocals. What were once indecipherable, fuzzy growls mixed at low volume, have now become clear, audible, and much more powerful. And while some of that may come from studio magic, I can tell just by listening that Kern has improved physically as a vocalist. I can back that up by example of his increase in range. 2006: constant growls. 2008/2011: same growls, some highs. And now: he’s polished up his highs, cleared up his growls, and thrown in mid-range growls. And this added variety in vocals makes a huge difference when comparing You Owe You Pay to one of their earlier releases.

The second move forward is their new drummer, Basti. Their previous drummer, Reti, seemed sorta out of place in Carnal Decay’s lineup. Not that he was a terrible drummer (he wasn’t), but one flaw of the band’s writing was the ill combination of Rasti’s need to constantly blast beat while guitarist Isabelle Iten took things in a more rhythmic direction. Basti’s approach to the kit is a much better compliment to Iten’s riffs, and overall makes this album much heavier and catchier than their previous three.

Now, the only problem I have with this album is the lack of lead guitar. That’s the same case with every Carnal Decay album. I feel that adding in leads would genuinely complete the band’s style, and Iten has already proved to be a skilled axewoman. I could understand how her being the sole guitarist in the band limits her in a live setting. But once again: she has proven skill, and I’m sure she could pull something off if there ever came a time Carnal Decay wanted to get a little shreddy.

In addition to all of this, my anticipation was very high. Carnal Decay was long overdue for a new release. Well…they owed, and they paid. And oh did it pay off! I’m comfortable saying that this is their best album yet. So much awesome brutal death metal has been coming out in the beginning months of 2017, and Carnal Decay couldn’t have picked a better time to drop this beast of an album.