Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Carnophage - Matter of a Darker Nature (2024)
I am on around my seventh or eighth listen through of Matter of a Darker Nature as I write this review. With Turkish death metal being somewhat of an unexplored geography for me it has been surprising to see such a healthy influence from Suffocation, even though they are the band with probably the most copied style in all of death metal (well Incantation aside maybe). As I have sat with this album over the past couple of weeks, I have swung between being in awe of the technical mastery that unites effortlessly with the more brutal elements of the sound and wondering if this is just outright Suffocation worship or even plagiarism. If I am honest, I think both reactions have a degree of validity to them. However, whilst this style of death metal is well-known to be plagiarised for years, it does still require a level of technical ability to execute this well.
Wherever your standpoint is, Carnophage certainly have the years of playing under their belts to have honed their art form. Playing as one of the key acts in the Turkish Death Metal movement (TRDM – founded by Cenotaph’s Batu Çetin) for nearly twenty years clearly, they are more than just a Suffocation tribute act. The sound on their third album is monstrous to say the least. From the very start there is a suffocating (pun intended) element to the weight of the riffs and when combined with that stabbing urgency that features through the album, it all soon comes together to suggest a group of musicians who are of a significant level of repute. Onur Özçelik on the drums is unbelievable at times. The successes of Matter of a Darker Nature would be much reduced without his presence I sense.
However, as a band, they sound like a tight unit overall. Pace changes seem to be done as shifts as opposed to jarring hairpin turns. Even in the more frenetic moments everyone seems to be in line with everyone else. No one instrument or performance dominates proceedings yet at the same time all the component parts can establish themselves notably. They remind me of Blood Red Throne in places whilst also echoing elements of Defeated Sanity also.
What places the cherry on the cake for the record is the measured songwriting that leads to a succinct run time of just over thirty-two minutes. This makes for a real palatable experience for me since my experience of some technical brutal death metal albums is that they are either quite lengthy or all tracks fall into a three-minute maximum time limit and are over before I can blink. With only one song kissing the five-minute mark, it appears that Carnophage know how to showcase their skills without overstaying their welcome or falling into formulaic territory.