HEEEEEUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRGGHH!!! That's the noise made by the behemoth of calculated extremity that is Cannibal Corpse as it strides across the globe every couple of years to take an enormous death metal dump on the musical landscape. 'Torture' is their latest turdtastic offering and longstanding fans will be pleased to hear that it's as grimly satisfying as anything they've released over the last decade. Morbid Angel's Erik Rutan is on production duties once again so you know this is gonna be a seriously brutal listen (as opposed to the Angel's more recent material which blew heathen goat dick) and this one matches the diverse savagery of 'Kill' and its grossly underrated predecessor 'The Wretched Spawn' (am I the only person that likes the album? It fucking rips!). The Corpse embody the third decade resilience of their comtempories Obituary and Suffocation in showing that death metal can actually improve with age - these dudes have graduated from spindly gore-loving teenagers to beefy, brawny father figures who can happily split their time between flipping burgers at their daughter's birthday BBQ and touring the fuck out of devastatingly precise DM to crowds of rabid followers. The fact that they had zero fashion sense to begin with has only helped them acheive timeless appeal across the various trends in metal and, unlike many of their peers who took career breaks during DM's fallow period of the late 90s/early 00s, Corpse have been ploughing relentlessly forward since day one to become the most brutal in the business. 'Torture' packs in the treats from pummelling opener 'Demented Aggression' to slo-core chugfests like 'Scourge of Iron' and 'As deep as the knife will go' and there's enough variety on show to keep even longstanding fans coming back for repeated listens. Whether it'll attract new converts is debatable but Corpse are in perhaps a minority of one in metal terms as the band you either embrace or draw the line at - their no-holds-barred approach to the wide spectrum of gory lyrics and imagery will turn off certain metalheads who feel they've gone too far whereas others admire their devotion to the fine art of savagery and ability to deliver a hit no-one else can match. Ultimately I fall into the latter category - I'm not gonna leap to the defence of stuff like 'Fucked with a knife' but their crank-it-up approach to imagery is the same that inspires TV producers to turn stuff like 'Rome' and 'Game of Thrones' from pleasant family entertainment into relentless onslaughts of slaughter and shagging. It might err towards gratuitousness but why miss such a good opportunity? Corpse do gore metal better than anyone else and are certainly more of an asset to modern heavy music than arseholes like Jack Black whose non-hilarious comedy metal is doing its utmost to reduce this music to impotent self-parody. And he has the balls to complain that 'rock is dead'? Listen Jackie boy, if you really care about the survival of rock music then why not throw your considerable weight behind the new stuff coming out now rather than ploughing out more tragic joke metal that wasn't funny a decade ago like some bored movie star who's taken up drag racing to make himself feel young again. This year has already yielded devastating newbies from established vets like Corpse and Napalm Death alongside gems from new skool sluggers Alcest, Christian Mistress and Torche (more on them later) so you better check the landscape properly before you declare the genre dead and buried. 'Torture' will school anyone doubting metal's future, and if that ain't enough then go see these guys tour it and tell me this beast has no more life in it. HEEEEUUURGH indeed.
Check out : 'Encased in Concrete', although preferably not while you're eating lunch.
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