Cerebral Cereal

There are many hidden gems within the late 90s-early 2000s era of brutal death metal. Usually, people bring up Devourment, Disgorge, Internal Bleeding, and Cryptopsy when talking about this era of extreme music. Leaving many others out and shunned. One highly underrated and fantastic band in my eyes of this era is Pyaemia. Very similar to another great band Disavowed. Both bands shared some of the same guys. Regardless this band was a very short-lived group. They managed to put out one album entitled “Cerebral Cereal”. And this album is nothing short of amazing.

Right away you can feel the Suffocation influence from the start. Over the course of these 9 tracks, you are beaten over the head with relentless intensity. Constant blast beats, tightly picked riffage, and fantastic grooves. Much like albums of this nature, it’s very straightforward yet very well-executed. Each song has a wide variety of tasty riffs and technical flare. I would say much like Suffocation this has the flavors of a technical brutal death metal band. But this is way more brutal death metal. It’s just got those technical riffs here and there that scream Suffocation.

Even the vocals are Suffocation-inspired. Joel Sta who also was in Disavowed for a short time does vocals here. And he does a very good Frank Mullen type of vocal style. Joel’s range consists of these nicely done gutturals and mid ranged growls. You also get the occasional shout or raspier backing vocals. Each line is delivered with brutality and aggression. He’s got a good flow and powerful voice.

Onto the guitars. Each riff on this album is fucking gnarly and absolutely brutal. Every single second you’re beaten to a bloody pulp with extremely dense and fast-picked riffs. There are tons of nasty palm muted breakdowns and mid-paced grooves all over this fucking thing. I love all the old school tremolos that pop up everywhere as well. This album in general sounds very old school. Raw and intense as this music should be. There is also the occasional melody used. But mainly this album latches onto the groove and never lets go.

Fast-paced riffs are also heavily used alongside blast beats. This is a very fast and blasting album. That leaves no room for you to escape. It’s a good blend/balance of fast blasts and clever hooks/rhythms. You also get those very crawling and technical flares in the riffs. Along with pinch harmonics. The bass also gets to shine with some very nice bass sweeps and crawls on “Impaled on Stakes”. The evil sounding technicality makes it a very memorable moment. Along with every other fantastic groove and tempo change on here.

The production of this record is very good. The sound on this album is visceral and sharp. The drums have a perfect pop to them that doesn’t drown out the kick drums. The kick drums sound especially fantastic as well. The bass is mixed very well and is heard throughout the entire album. Vocally this is a very upfront and aggressive-sounding mix. But most importantly the guitars have a fantastic tone and crunch to them.

The drumming on this album is very blast beat dominated. The blast beats are played with hella intensity and with great precision. But man the double bass and drum grooves are what sell it for me. I love each chunky mid-paced drum beat or the occasional thrashy beat. It keeps things intense, fast, and engaging throughout these 28 minutes of death. The breakdowns are also obnoxiously heavy and gut punching. Overall the drums are a good balance between fast-paced blasting and good rythmns.

In conclusion, this album is brutal death metal gold. Each song is a fun listen and never fails to get my head banging. If you love Suffocation this is a must know in my eyes. And for any brutal death metal head. It’s aggressive, groovy, and very well written. So if you want some very blunt brutal death metal with a tinge of technicality. Check out Pyaemia immediately.

FFO: Suffocation, Disavowed, Disgorge, Severe Torture, Deeds of Flesh

The 2000s were really something special for death metal. If the 80s was learning how to walk and the early to mid 90s was the genre first honest attempt at a 100 meter sprint, then the 2000s (and let’s be honest, late 90s too) was a coked up F1 grand prix. The number of bands that took what Suffocation & Co. were doing and building their very own sound on it is nearly uncountable. Inveracity, Deeds of Flesh, Gorgasm, and Brodequin are just some of the now household BDM acts that started gaining traction around this time. Pyaemia is also the son of these times, shocking the Netherlands and the rest of the planet with a single full-length album the likes of which hasn’t been met to this day in terms of brutality and catchiness.

Brutal death metal and catchiness? What’s the nonsense about?! Well, while the band is still on the gore-infused, grey matter regurgitating end of the death metal spectrum, it never goes so far into shock value where musicality would suffer. It’s not the slam metal philosophy of the last decade of trying to out-fistfuck the other bands for the sake of having more faecal matter on your arms. No. Pyaemia takes great pride in just how listenable Cerebral Cereal is. The rabid grunts of Joel Sta are the usual brutal death metal shtick but mixed in such a way that they feel warm. Granted, warm like blood freshly splattered on your face, but it’s still warm. These gutturals sometimes get switched up with higher pitched screams or gurgles much akin to how Exhumed utilizes dual vocal styles, just a bit more infrequently.

When it comes to instruments however, it’s a lot less typical. Sure, you got insanely down-tuned guitars chugging away with admirable ferocity, and the beats are most certainly of the blast variety, but they never get obnoxiously overdone. Groove is the name of the game here with riffs even developing into recognizable melodies and passages, making every track distinctly different. This alone should be enough to anyone familiar with brutal death metal to have their interest piqued, but that’s not all! These earworm guitar passages manage to stay heavy without being littered with breakdowns like slam acts are, only really having a brief bridge section on Malodorous Rancidity where they slow down for repeated hammer blows to the cranium.

Clocking in at just 29 minutes, Cerebral Cereal isn’t a long record by any stretch of the imagination. This is good. Why? Because I’m tired of listening to records in this genre that expect you to pay attention to them for 40+ minutes, only to waste the time with music that’s A) unremarkable or B) could have been condensed into a 30-35-minute-long album. The sweet spot is between 27 and 36 for me, and as anyone with a 1st grade elementary school education could tell, Cerebral Cereal falls in there. This way it never gets relegated to background music, and you never confuse the spiralling melody of Sugar Spiced Anus (it feels so wrong to write this down) with the outlandish stop-n-go squeals of Blood Spewed on My Face.

The band doesn’t run out of steam for a second and finish just when they said everything they wanted to say. And as it ends, I find myself constantly reaching for the replay button. Why is that? On the surface their music describes much like many other bands of the genre, but at the same time… They are just unique. Sure, many bands have prioritised catchy, groovy licks, but none of them sound quite like Cerebral Cereal. They are all lacking the extra tightness, that additional chemical X of headbangability (lovely word, let’s pretend it’s real) that makes this 2001 (somewhat) hidden gem stick out. All of this earned Pyaemia a permanent place in my BDM listening rotation next to the likes of Malignancy and Cryptopsy, and sent me down the 2000s death metal rabbit hole I’m still just knee-deep in. Will I find another release that fits all my arbitrary criteriums and makes my dreams wet? Well even if I don’t, at least I had breakfast.

I would argue that Pyaemia's Cerebral Cereal is a classic of brutal death metal and a highly underrated one at that. Being released in 2001, it remains the only full-length ever put out by the band due to their drummer suffering a wrist injury. It's no surprise that the band preferred to split rather than press on with a new drummer, as the drumwork in Cerebral Cereal is one of the best I've heard in brutal death. The blast beats are relentless and incessant, pounding your ears to a bleeding pulp at breakneck speed.

The riffs on this album are simply stellar and memorable as they grab the listener by the neck and demand their full attention. Engaging and dare I say even groovy or melodic riffs make this album a definite must-listen. Coupled with the blasting drumwork, the overall sound of this album remains extremely brutal and heavy while still enjoyable to listen to. The main riff on Blood Spewed on My Face has to be my favourite in the entire album with the one in Sugar Spiced Anus (what a title) coming in at a close second. A multitude of tempo changes mix the heavy chugs, proto-slamming grooves and catchy melodic riffs to birth this absolute masterpiece of an album. Supreme songwriting is at play here which just elevates this album even more. At just under 30 minutes, Cerebral Cereal is short but sweet although I definitely would not mind a few more songs of the same caliber and intensity.

The vocals are top-tier brutal death gutturals reminiscent of Matti Way. Nothing too wacky but excellent and filthy nonetheless. A variety of low growls, high screams and barking roars prevent it from sounding monotonous or boring. The album’s production is clean but not overproduced which lets each element of the music shine in its disgustingly brutal beauty. Overall, Pyaemia’s Cerebral Cereal is a hallmark of brutal death metal and is an essential listen for fans of the genre or just heavy music in general.

Absolute classic in technical death metal. this is one of those early albums that helped define the genre, and changed the face of death metal. The main thing here is the drummer, and it is no surprise that after his accident they had to stop, for lack of drummers. The guitar work is amazing and the bass is also pretty cool, stands out from the guitars quiet a bit and is pretty well audible through out the album. The vocals are pretty standard, really low growling vocals. The drummer plays pretty much constant blast beats, and the double bass work is constant 32nd notes under the entire thing, every riff has these. His foot work is absolutely amazing, very few people can compare, perhaps George Kolias of Nile fame, and a few others. But really his drumming is inhuman in terms of stamina and constancy goes. That is what makes this album so relentless, the incredible drumming. Everything else is also top notch, all of the songs rule, without exception. The entire album is roughly half an hour, but you will break a sweat just listening to it. Really that is all that can be said about this classic, it needs to be heard. If you by some chance have missed this and are into brutal death metal, get it by all means, this is a really basic album in the genre.

"We dedicate this album to the gods of deathgrind Suffocation R.I.P.", so it is written in the cd booklet of "Cerebral Cereal", the debut album of Dutch band Pyaemia. And that tells you exactly where they went shopping musically; from the opening song "Gorging On Mucus And Bile" onward, the Rotterdam band blasts tightly and in highest gear through their fast death/grind, whereby Suffocation indeed comes to the surface from time to time, especially in the slower parts where they play with the tempi. Nothing wrong with that, because the band adequately performs its task on this debut (with a very funny title), that was recorded in the Excess Studio in Rotterdam, without making their influences too obvious.

Fans of blast beats, deep grunts in the vein of Frank "Grizzly Bear" Mullen, heavy guitar riffs but also the necessary variation, will certainly be satisfied with this fairly civilised and transparent sounding cd, and I'm certain we'll hear a lot more from these four guys in the future.
A small point of criticism though, apparently good songs don't last long, because after a little over 29 minutes the party is over ...

This is excellent deathgrind in the Suffocation vein, no more or less. Differences between bands in this style can seem largely hypothetical to the disinterested observer, but this band's rather distinct brand of mutated melody helps to separate them from the crowd. I think most of the music here would probably sound decent enough if played on violin, believe it or not, and the songwriting is very memorable. In particular I find myself whistling the tremolo riffing starting at about 1:10 in "Impaled on Stakes" from time to time. Seriously! Sometimes the music makes me imagine small chamber pieces performed by beings from hell, but maybe I have more imagination than most. The ridiculous song titles (no lyrics are provided) might be a turnoff for some, but they do fit in with the music's healthy sense of absurdity.

The excellent production is also worth mentioning. Usually one may expect a deathgrind recording to sound like a trash compactor operating in a dank cave, but here everything comes in loud and clear.

In short, much better than the average release in this style.

If anyone enjoys sick vocals, fast and technical drumming as well as heavy guitar and bass riffs then Pyaemia is just the band for them. With a lot of groovy riffs and beats Pyaemia hold a sort of style of their own highly familiar to that of their friends Disavowed. The drumming is full of blast beats and double bass. Guitars are complicated yet very understandable, as for the vocals they are deep and gurgley whilst the scream is loud and high-pitched.

As a band they are extremely tight. Everyone is great at what he does and knows what he is doing. Innovative ideas erupt in every song pleasing the listener from track 1 all the way through track 9. If anyone gets bored listening to these guys, he deserves to be hacked up and fed to wild bores.On the whole the production is good. Sound quality is amazing, the snare is slightly lower than the rest of the instruments but other then that it’s great. One can easily notice that the songs are based on gore just by observing the front CD cover.

First of all...the album title. It cracks me up. So do the song titles. 'Sugar Spiced Anus', 'Cranial Blowout', 'Blood Spewed On My Face'. It's just such a wonderful picture. Anyways, this isn't about lyrics and titles, it's about music. Sharing members with Disavowed (on the same label, Unique Leader Records...one of the best labels), this band is bound to be good. Pulling off some nice drumming and guitarwork on the songs 'Everlasting Torture' and 'Malodorous Rancidity' and covering it all up in a blanket of low vocals and blastbeats, these songs absolutely must be heard by fans of Disavowed, Spawn Of Posession, and Disgorge (any of the 689767 of them). I can't say much about the album, besides that it is quite the solid release on one of the best brutal labels. Oh, and the title track is worth popping if you like Suffocation. That's about it. Order this if you already haven't.