Homicidal Decimation

'Homicidal Decimation' is the full length debut from Oz's death metal brutes Excarnated. With this beast of an album, Excarnated became my favourite Australian's band, hands down. See, Excarnated have character, and that is too rare in death metal circles nowadays.

Are you a "death metal + melody = NO" person? If your answer is yes, then buy this album immediately. 'Homicidal Decimation' is devoid of any guitar melodies, there're just riffs. I've hardly ever heard a death metal album, on which every song is as catchy as cenobites' hooks without any swell melodies. Vocals patterns are well constructed and this adds overall catchiness. Same goes with drums and bass, which add loads of characteristics to the songs, not just rhythms. Anyways, the riffs, they vary from simple head severing ones to gut twisting torturings. Meaning it can be ultra heavy mayhem or guitar squealing antics. A few solos here and there going through fret board don't mean much, but do not feel out of place either. Bass work is heavy-as-fuck earthshattering pulse, usually heavily distorted. Drums are programmed and it's clear immediately. They sound way too digital and jump from heaviness like smell from a room full of rotting corpses. The programming is well done, and varying beats are full of small details, making it feel more thought out than usually. After many a listen, drums began to sound better, like becoming another characteristic of the album.Tempos change frequently, and there's stuff between doomy crawling abominations and blast beat blitzkrieg. Closest band I can think of is US horror deathsters Mortician, but Excarnated are able to do it their own way.

Vocals are diverse enough. There's very low growls, more screamy ones and some spoken, which is the only human-like style utilized. I couldn't make up all the lyrics, so it's good they are printed (and probably banned in Germany). More or less picturesque lyrics about Cenobites (from Clive Barker's Hellraiser), killers and other bloodshed. This was released by the band themselves and looks better than many an independently released metal album.

This is a very good album of brutal death metal, without swell melodies. If you do not need any ear candy, but brutality is welcome, pick up 'Homicidal Decimation' ASAP. It's worth the hunting you might need to do.

(originally written for ArchaicMetallurgy.com in 2005)

This is exactly the sort of album that makes my heart flutter and all others wretch: a deranged combination of early Mortician, Corpse Carving, and a bit of death/thrash ala early Morbid Angel or even Vader. Yes, it completely sounds like the sort of chocolate lobster situation where two great tastes grate tastes together, but this album just manages to succeed in every dimension it should just simply fail.

It's just so sure of itself that I can't imagine not liking it. The drum machine used is aggressively inhuman, as if it's daring you to complain about how cold it feels when not even the slightest effort has been made to disguise its mechanical origin. The riffs are often unbearably simple one-chord chugs when necessary and incisive Vader-style tremolo elsewhere. The guitar tone is digital yet impressively meaty, filling up the musical space very well during all moments. It was very clearly recorded in someone's bedroom with it's too-crisp and slightly cramped sound.

Despite all of this the band doesn't seem self-conscious for even one second, portraying an almost Beherit-like ability to not give a hundredth of a fuck what you think about it. The opening track has a spoken word passage in it from one of the band members. Spoken word passages are not a common feature of the album, and do that comment the band replies: 'So?' This is the product of people who put in a spoken word passage because they thought a spoken word passage would sound cool at that moment, not out of any need to incorporate it to seem open-minded or because of a concept in mind or any such brow-furrowing bullshit: it's a very pure musical display and it deserves all sorts of praise just for that.

To scale back the dick-sucking a little bit, the songs are pretty simple: they're mostly a simple alternation of blasting and tremolo with defiant chugs and lurching drum machine rhythms providing a deviant marching cadence for no one to dance to. But here and there, a different element will sneak in; one of the chug riffs employs a very convoluted time signature to give a deeply off-kilter and insane feel, while in other section the drum programming is surprisingly nuanced, with unique fills thrown in here and there for variation alongside the swift river of bloodsoaked guitar and rumbling bass. It's not complicated music but it's a bit more complex when it needs to be, but never to excess.

This is the sort of album where the more conventional metal scene has the upper hand over the sort of people who write reviews for websites: they know how to appreciate the simple virtues of albums like these more than those dissecting the hidden Freudian meanings of the latest Axis Of Perdition EP. If you appreciate death metal for its baser elements, however, you should enjoy this, and for me at least it gives me the sort of feeling I get when I listen to Lowbrow or any similar artist: it's music that does what it wants, utterly without pretense.

Who loves buying second hand CDs? I know I do. It is my preferred way of blind-purchasing CDs, as I don't blow as much money that way. Also, a lot of people seem to like throwing out CDs from really obscure bands and funnily enough, I like to buy 'em. So it all works out nicely. That's how I came across this Melbourne based band. They play a brand of brutal death metal which I find really enjoyable, as it has this old-school feel about it and an organic sort of sound.

So anyway, onto the music. Firstly, I'll emphasize that while this band is certainly brutal death metal, they're rather mid-paced and the riffing is perfectly suited to headbanging. The riffs are actually really cool though they tend to sound a little similar, especially in the breakdowns - the breakdown in "The Lament Configuration" and the one in "The Trophy Hunter" are almost exactly the same, for example. But then again, the fact that you'll probably be bobbing your head about halfway into the first song will certainly compensate. It is a bit of a pity that they're slightly pushed to the side for the sake of the vocals, because I'd enjoy them even more if they were more upfront. I also believe that the drums were programmed on here, but they're not abused and they offer quite a bit of diversity.

Anyway, talking of the vocals, the band makes the interesting of choice of mixing harsh and clean vocals on this album with considerable success, especially where the cleans are used. Unfortunately the only instances that the clean vocals seem to be used are in Aristrocratic Depravity coupled with the harsh growls, and the spoken bit in the breakdown of The Lament Configuration where they sound fucking evil and is easily one of the highlights of this album. The low growls are pretty standard old-school style growls, but the high harsh vocals sound a little more strained and not as appealing to my ears. I also think the vocals are a little too up front in the production and tend to overpower the guitars a bit.

It is rather unfortunate that this band broke up, because I really like this album. It was well worth the 8 dollars I got it for, to say the least.