Death Metal has an endearing, crushing quality, but it can also be a genre where finding one’s own path can be difficult. Considering the hyper-aggressive nature that sometimes sacrifices songwriting for brutality, as it adheres to the sometimes monochrome, blood-red sounds of double bass and guttural vocals. Cartlidge manages to take on their own personality amid a genre that can be rather uniform in its sound and dynamic scope due to the common focus on aggression. Operating Altar (Everlasting Spew Records) is a weird concept album that has the crazy spirit of Acid Witch if they were not obsessed with Halloween. These guys are more focused on Carcass-like medical horror.
Photo credit: Kei Mowry
They kick things off in a commanding manner, and the second song finds them leaning into Death Metal’s Thrash roots. With this comes an increased aptitude for hooky riffs, which, at the end of the day, all the double bass in the world doesn’t matter if we don’t have good songs. “The Autopsy” finds the band throwing themselves into the depths of the genre’s extremes with a more frantic approach. The higher shrieked vocals hold more in common with Deicide as they accelerate the pummelling. The Sanguine Fiend” is more deliberate, which is the middle ground this album settles best on. Perhaps it’s due to the tempo at which they attack these songs, but they tend to clock in around the four-minute mark or less. Makes for tighter songwriting than if they allowed things to self-indulgently sprawl out. They set themselves apart on songs like “Among the Offal.” This songwriting streak that does not find them mired down in the need for speed continues in “Anatomical Incantations”; the faster sections are balanced out by the passages of more grooving riffage. There are echoes of old Morbid Angel and Carcass, without being a blatant tribute to either.
The title track finds the band getting caught up in thrashing speed. The last song, “Stitch By Stitch,” has a more purposeful accent on the blazing-fast chorus to differentiate it. It is unlikely that anyone is going to hail this as the best death metal album of the year due to the already impressive competition in that regard. However, this is a fun album, with suitably grim subject matter that will appeal to horror fans, and this album is a great deal of fun. Where the band truly succeeds is finding a way to carve out their own place to carry the torch as Carcass retires, which is certainly worth something, so fans of tried-and-true death metal that is dark enough to convincingly sell horror concepts will find plenty to celebrate.
Buy the album here:
https://linktr.ee/esrww
8 / 10
WIL CIFER
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