January 2025 - Feature Release - The Horde Edition

Wishing you a happy new year, gentlemen, and let us hope for 2025 to end up with an abundance of high-quality metal material just as 2024 did. As it is my turn to nominate a featured release for The Horde, I would like to highlight one of my personal favourites of the year - "Matter of a Darker Nature" from Turkish death metallers Carnophage. I really enjoy the band's take on brutal tech-death sound, but perhaps most importantly, these fellas do know how to reign in their technical prowess to compose well-structured and engaging songs. There is certainly a touch of Necrophagist-esque flamboyance as well, so if that's your cup of tea and if bands like Cryptopsy & Hate Eternal feature frequently on your playlists, then I think you'll love this one too. Happy listening!

https://metal.academy/releases/54220

This is quite a short album, so I managed four or five listen throughs this morning. Here's my take on it:

Carnophage are a five-piece from Ankara in Türkiye, forming in 2006 and "Matter of a Darker Nature" is their third full-length, following eight years after previous effort, "Monument". I haven't listened to the band before, but here they play a style of technical and brutal death metal, the likes of which I have not encountered too often. Now I sometimes have issues with both technical and brutal death metal and, at least in part, those issues are present on "Matter of a Darker Nature". Not so much with regards to the brutal DM side of their sound as that is actually very well presented, being aggressive and vicious-sounding with thick, juicy riffs and a suitably bellowing vocal performance from singer Oral Akyol. However, it is the technical aspect of their sound that I am struggling with, or more accurately, the technical complexity of the songwriting. I can stomach a certain degree of technical complexity in my metal, but at the point where it feels like technical dexterity and songwriting complexity become an album's prime reason for being, sacrificing the coherency of the individual tracks, then I tend to check out. Unfortunately, for me anyway, Carnophage are all-in on the technical side and, in my opinion, often to the detriment of the individual tracks. I found myself really getting into tracks like "Until the Darkness Kills the Light" or the ominous-sounding title track, but then sudden changes of phrasing and tempo interrupt the flow and make the tracks feel choppy and disjointed, for no apparent reason. I know that the issue here is mine and mine alone and I have to admit that the band do sound incredibly adroit technically, with a very tight and focussed delivery and when they start to lay down a brutal riff I'm thinking "yes, here we go", only to have said riff supplanted by an enforced tempo or directional change and me once more feeling frustrated with them.

Multiple listens have tempered my annoyance with the technical aspects and when the band hit it right I found them to be very impressive purveyors of the more brutal end of the death metal spectrum, but an album like this will always leave me with reservations as I find the staccato nature of the music incredibly wearying. Still, good luck to them because even though it isn't exactly my cup of tea, I can tell they are a talented bunch and for those who are in the market for what they are offering, I am sure they deliver the goods.

3.5/5

Here's my review:

Don’t you fucking love it when someone recommends you an artist that you’ve never heard of before & they then proceed to rip you a new asshole? Well, that’s exactly what’s happened for me with Karl’s feature release nomination of Turkish brutal/technical death metal five-piece Carnophage this week & they've left me well & truly pondering over why I’d not been exposed to them before. As most of you would no doubt already be aware, I’m somewhat of a brutal death metal tragic, having been heavily involved in the scene myself through my own mid-90’s death metal band Neuropath so I generally keep track of virtually everything that’s worth hearing from the niche subgenre, even if I may only rarely commit to reviewing a lot of the releases it contains. So, imagine my surprise when an unknown Turkish act steps up to the plate & lays waste to my expectations &, in doing so, manages to create a sound that is perfectly suited to my unique personal taste profile, at least for a fair portion of its runtime. Let’s take a look at how they did it then.

Carnophage don’t seem to be the most prolific of bands, this being only their third full-length album with a massive eight-year gap between each. But on the strength of “Matter of a Darker Nature”, I’d have to suggest that they’ve used that time wisely, even if I’m not across their previous work (yet). This particular record is the band’s first for Indian label Transcending Obscurity Records & saw Carnophage returning with a freshly bolstered lineup from the one that created 2016’s “Monument” album which sported a more streamlined four-piece arrangement. The change is the return of bass player Bengi Öztürk who played a role in 2008’s “Deformed Future//Genetic Nightmare” debut album but was strangely absent from “Monument” with guitarists Mert Kaya & Serhat Kaya (Cenotaph) handling the basslines on top of their main instruments. It’s unclear as to who is responsible for the production of “Matter of a Darker Nature” which is a shame as its sound is simply so in tune with my death metal preferences that I was always gonna be balls deep in this record within seconds of it hitting my ear drums. It features a super-compressed & ridiculously heavy mix that highlights the incredibly intense drumming of Onur Özçelik (where in the actual fuck has this dude been hiding?), the highly technical riffage of the guitar duo & the ultra-deep death growls of front man Oral Akyol. If I was being picky, I might suggest that the lead guitar work could have been brought a little further forward in the mix but it’s obviously a little tough when everything is so in-your-face & challenging for the battering rights of your poor cranium. It’s a credit to the whole team that produced this record that you can hear everything as clearly as you can when there’s simply so much going on at the same time.

Carnophage come squarely from the Suffocation school of technically-challenging brutal death metal which just so happens to be my favourite style of metal & one that’s rarely pulled off to the same level of success as the New York champions of the sound. The thing that gives Suffocation a clear edge over the mass of copy-cats that have flooded the underground scene over the years is their uncanny ability to know exactly how technically complex they can make their song & riff structures without having a detrimental impact on the incredibly brutal sound they’re pushing & this is a talent that is extremely rare in the modern scene i.e. the lost art of memorability. Carnophage don’t quite get that equation exactly right with a little over half of this material being a little too clever for its own good but never dipping below a very solid level of quality & enjoyment. However, there are a few songs included here where everything simply falls into place & they utterly slay me while dipping their toes into a rarely touched sound that I consider to be perfectly tailored to my personal taste profile &, for that reason, I was always gonna be dishing out a very high score. To be fair, the best two of those three incredible tracks are the only ones that I’d suggest don’t fall into the tech death camp with “Eventually They Will Die” being arguably the best example of the brutal death metal sound I’ve heard this decade & one of the most relentlessly savage tracks in metal history. The lower tempo “The Day We Avenge On” which follows immediately afterwards is almost as impressive, showcasing a slightly more restrained approach to song structure & giving the listener a much needed rest as it’s not quite as brutal as the vast majority of the other material. Opener “In My Bones” is the exception to the rule in that it well & truly indulges itself as far as technicality goes but also manages to pull it off in a fashion that doesn’t reduce the impact of Carnophage’s massive wall of sound.

Now let me indulge myself in some gushing about the performances here because they’re worth highlighting. I’m really struggling to understand how I can not have heard of drummer Onur Özçelik before because he’s an absolute phenomenon. The incredibly tight, fast & relentless blasting that he undertakes is further highlighted by a clear knack for nuance & it’s his contribution more than any other that makes Carnophage the beast that they are. I know I’ve got a history of talking up bands with exceptional extreme drummers but this guy sits right up their with the leaders in the field. I also love the vocals of Oral Akyol, particularly given how intelligible they are while always remaining undeniably brutal in their delivery. Intelligibility is an underrated trait in the brutal death metal scene & one that I’ve always valued, even if I can easily look past it if the instrumentation is savage enough to warrant it. I’m also a big fan of the hints at modern dissonance that pop up at key moments across the tracklisting which gives Carnophage a little bit of differentiation from the wealth of Suffocation clones out there. To be fair, these guys get the balance just right as far as being able to pay clear homage to the gods of the past while offering something of their own at the same time.

I know, I know…. this all sounds like a very positive review for a release that’s hardly raised an eyebrow in terms of commercial success over the last year but I’m afraid that’s somehow how it works in the current scene as, despite what people may tell you, the vast majority of metalheads still struggle with music of this sort of unrelenting intensity so the responses will always being middling at best. As someone that generally embraces the most extreme bands on the planet, Carnophage have come as a breath of fresh air for a dude that has long been searching for an act that can compete with my all-time favourite. Let me give you the tip that Carnophage can & do. In fact, I’m gonna place “Matter of a Darker Nature” behind only Suffocation’s most elite four records & my two Hour of Penance albums of choice in terms of the brutal death metal subgenre as a whole which is really saying something. If Neuropath had have continued down the path we were going towards the end of our time then I tend to think that we would have ended up sounding very similar to this record so it’s been a very rewarding experience for me indeed.

For fans of Odious Mortem, Severed Savior & Decimation.

4.5/5