Cancer Eradication

Massive anti christian brutality, brought to you with friendly greetings from Dave Rotten from Avulsed (among a fair few more) and his mate Roger from Infected Flesh.

Combining the dark and aggressive death metal from bands such as Incantation, Vital Remains and Immolation, with brutal death metal in the vein of Mortician, old Dying Fetus and Devourment, the band creates some fierce, truly punishing stuff. Remorselessly heavy, the band plow themselves through a barrage of ultra low gutturals, downtuned guitars and pounding (programmed) percussion, pouring all these elements into pretty varied tracks that alternate furiously blasted frenzy with pounding midtempo stomp, as well as with some doomy crawl injected. While the intensity level is kept high for most of the runtime, there are times that the slow parts unfortunately undercut the built up tension. Take for example the track "Christ Is Gone", where these slow sections manage to take out any momentum present, taming the brutal and intense music significantly. A damn shame, that, because it's in the aggressive parts that Christ Denied really shines. I like them best going full-on bananas, and that is unfortunately not the case for the entire album.

Of course, the biggest attraction that the band has on offer must be the vocal doings of Dave Rotten. What this guy squeezes out of his throat is simply amazing. He does some of the lowest guttural bellowing I've ever heard, alternating that with a plethora of froggy burps, grunts and other vocal shenanigans. I don't need to tell you that these are great fun to listen to, and are probably the first thing anyone will tell you about this band, and rightfully so. These crazy-ass vocals combined with the crushing brutality on offer, it's what makes this album for me.

While the musicianship on offer is excellent, with lots of belligerent death metal riffing present, there is also a quite large use of pinch harmonics present, and at times these beeps and boops get on my nerve a bit. It's only a small annoyonce in the end, but it's one of those things that once you've noticed them, you can't un-notice them. It would admittedly make a good drinking game, but still ... I will also point out that the programmed drums are adequately put together, but they sound somewhat lifeless throughout. In all honesty, these don't sound worse than most drum triggers in death metal would, so I'm not going to make too much of a deal out of this.

This album is a good dose of crushing brutality that goes in best when going full bonkers in all its aggressiveness. Once the foot goes of the gas, it has the tendency to suck out some of the lunatic force the band exudes at their most intense. Other than that, this is a worthy dose of massive death metal, that despite the minor slips mentioned above still manages to create a truly menacing vortex of insanity when it comes to savage brutality.