The More You Suffer

Those Swedes are starting to really piss me off... first they bring us the Gothensuck sound, and now there's this offshoot - a few more thrash riffs, and a lot more aggression, but in general just as utterly BORING. (Oh yeah, there's Opeth too, which deserves its own circle of Hell, but we're not gonna talk about them here.) The main band of that genre is The Haunted, and then there are the slightly more thrashy versions like Carnal Forge.

Yes, there's the occasional thrash riff in here... however it's of the boring new kind (see also Dew Scented and the like) and in general this is a very uninteresting album. There's also just a bit too much crappy Swedish melodicism to be found here (see that brilliant "thrash break" in the first song around 1.40).

We start with "Heil Butt Fuck" or whatever the first song is called - it's okay, even though it's got that really shitty interlude. The second song is a bit more solid overall, but the thing is, by then the formula is starting to wear thin. Ironically, when they play fast they are okay but boring - when they slow down, they turn really terrible. The chorus of "Deathblow" for example. There's that nice groove riff to be found in that song, which makes it halfway decent. Though of course it's been used by everyone and their grandmother, including Metallica. (One) If late-era (past Ride the Lightning) Metallica uses it, you know it's a tired riff. Ripped and Torn takes a while to get going before it turns into the usual fast stuff.

Destroy Life - now there's an okay intro riff. Then, it just turns into the Same old Shit. This makes Reign in Blood sound like the epitome of variety here. They throw in a trebly death-metal passage before a killer thrash riff around 1.05. So they do know how to thrash, but they just don't do so nearly enough. A dumb interlude follows... am I the only one that hates that style of vocal distortion? Anthrax seems to have fallen into deep butt-love with the idea, and Slayer's latest also has this tendency. Yeah, that's another thing that this album sounds like: the latest Slayer. Though it is better than that pile of shit - but the vocal ideas tend to be kinda similar when Carnal Forge turns on that damn distorter.

Cursed is a silly groove number - a bit slower than the previous stuff, and really would not be out of place on the first Machine Head album. A thrash riff in the middle carries that part of the song but the rest of it is pretty bad. Dying Killing Breed Machine tries to get all melodic on us in the beginning, sounding like a Gothenburg album before it goes into the usual Carnal Forge sound. Deep Rivers of Blood is a total Gothenburg-sounding song. Didn't I hear something like this on the first Soilwork album, only with better leads that time? Breaking Boundaries has two decent riffs and a lot of shitty passages. The vocals are just in general mixed in far too loud in the song, because otherwise the flow of this song would be quite enjoyable, especially in the middle portion.

Into Oblivion - very generic shriek to start things off, and also a very generic riff. The riff at 0.15 is far better but too bad it lasts only 6 seconds before the song descends into mediocrity. It goes into the forced post-thrash Machine Head/Chaos AD sound around 1.15 and then into a more traditional Swedish Haunted-style sound later. Generally worthless. My Bloody Rampage (as opposed to that of my next-door neighbour) is pretty much representative of the entire album, with the one cool thrash riff coming around 1.05 in and then another one at 1.57 - occasionally they really manage to nail what they are doing, but then there's the shitty passage around 2.10 that totally ruins everything. What happened to the riffs?

Baptised in Fire - well then, that settles it, the only thing that someone hasn't been baptised in is vomit. There's been fire and ice (Bathory), blood (Helstar), semen (Regurgitated Cow Fetus), shit (some band I can't remember right now) and now just plain fire. Oh yeah, the song is generally very boring, but there's the obligatory one cool riff at 0.57. The middle section is utter shit, though. "I was born in Hell..." Let Me Bleed is completely like everything we've heard before, so there's no need to discuss is separately.

So what we have here is a very average album that wears very thin by the end, especially as the decent thrash riffs become fewer and fewer in frequency, and the dumb Gothenhaunt shit ideas rise to the forefront. Vocals too accentuated, occasionally too distorted, and the riffs just are mediocre at best. If you like this new Swedish sound, this is right up your alley.