No?
Time to adjust the aggregate worldview, as the denizens of heavy metal's most rabid, intense cult are about to throw the Great Lakes State's reset switch. Detroit's The Black Dahlia Murder are back with a formidable and ghastly new album, and by the bloodcurdling sounds of it, they're making a serious bid toward vaulting into the hallowed halls of death metal's elite in an attempt to claim the genre's grisly, dark soul.
Cracks in the steely bars holding Black Dahlia in the cell of metal's underground began to creak and snap around the discharge of the quintet's last opus, 2007's "Nocturnal." Now, with the Tuesday, Sept. 15 release of the band's fourth full-length slab, "Deflorate," the cage has crumbled and collapsed and the beast that is this band has been liberated.
And it's seeking a few Homo sapien heads to peel off in search of brain matter to munch on, though this outing embraces more black metal elements than the group's previous splatter songs.
From the blinding strains of "Deflorate's" opening cut, "Black Valor," to the final tatters of the disc's closer, the five-minute-plus "I Will Return" -- a near epic when your album's 10-song menu flies by a hair shy of 34 minutes -- Black Dahlia's latest absolutely punishes.
It's brutal and serious as a heart attack, but at the same time sacrifices little of the unit's goofball humor, made conspicuous on the hard-partying Motor City hooligans' first DVD, 2009's "Majesty."
The band's wry wit -- evidenced additionally by previous album cuts like "Miasma's" "Statutory Ape" and "Nocturnal's" "What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse," -- surfaces anew in over-the-top black metal lyrics on "Valor": "To the almighty one, unholy bearer of horns: Empower me, flow through my veins, and carry me in war."
Without mercy, vocalist Trevor Strnad hollers like a cornered banshee. His high-pitched screams and belching growls are the kind of agonizing sounds a human might make if pieces of flesh were being knifed from one's body during the horror of anesthesia awareness.
The head-spinning velocity of the collective is exhausting, leaving the listener thoroughly pummeled once silence replaces the savage riffs of guitarist Brian Eschbach and the inhuman double-bass blast beats courtesy of skins surgeon Shannon Lucas, who takes precision drumming to an almost scientific level.
It's tempting to seek out a radar gun to see how fast this baby breezes by. Not a whiff of negative space is wasted. Every nut and bolt is locked in and fastened tight. And as the band has gained experience, it just keeps getting better.
TBDM is all too familiar with lineup shifts. "Nocturnal" heralded the arrival of Lucas and bassist Ryan "Bart" Williams, and "Deflorate" brings yet another change.
New, Atlanta-bred guitarist Ryan Knight (ex-Arsis), making his debut after an ugly divorce from shredder John Kempainen, who played lead on the group's previous three albums, lashes out with bucketloads of scrambling, fleet-fingered pick sweeps. But this axeman also shows restraint, instinctively knowing when to go for the tasty bend or slow-burn harmony.
Black Dahlia has finally assembled a group of players capable of conjuring the accuracy required for material this complex, distinguishing themselves in death metal's weighty and crowded scrap heap.
The band ratchets up all preceding forays into audio barbarism on cuts like "Necropolis" (the album's first single), "Denounced, Disgraced" and "Death Panorama," but the affair is most interesting when the band toys with tempo on "Eyes of Thousand" and the aforementioned "I Will Return," which explores being cryogenically frozen.
"That Which Erodes the Most Tender" and "A Selection Unnatural," which Strnad says is "meant to be a science-fiction shocker about the short life of a terribly deformed mutant of a child," illustrate what it might be like to be thrown into a blender just as the puree switch has flicked to the on position, and "Throne of Lunacy" just outright slams.
The biggest knock on these homeboys is that at times, the songs tend to bleed into one another, blowing by so speedily that's easy to miss the dead air in between tunes.
It's a fair criticism, but then again, no one's ever asked Cannibal Corpse or Slayer to put on the brakes.
Recommended.
(Heads up: The deluxe edition includes a bonus DVD. Those of you who've seen "Majesty" know these guys are both down to earth and hysterical.) -- James Chesna
Find out what everyone else is viewing on abc12.com
| More Mid-Michigan and Flint news
|
ABC12 News at a glance |
|
abc12togo.com wireless |
Get us on your iPhone |
| ABC12 Desktop Alert Tool |
abc12.com newsletters |
|
Visit us on Facebook | Report a typo
|
| Follow us on
Twitter |
Comment on this story below and we may read what you have to say on the air.
