Unleash the Carnivore

Unleash the Carnivore is an attempt at the band trying to get back to their original roots. It’s not necessarily a good attempt, but at least they tried and they’re getting back to their good side. With such a disaster like Butcher the Weak, we needed something to heal our ears from that monstrosity, and Unleash the Carnivore is definitely a better improvement.

To start out, this album is heavy and doesn’t sound like try-hard shit, yay! The guitars are very heavy and grindy, similar to Molesting the Decapitated’s guitar sound. Doesn’t really sound quite like Molesting, but it’s on the same scale. The guitars here actually have some foundation and don’t sound weak and boring. The drumming is better. Eric Park’s playing is more organized, consistent, and proper. Throughout the album he throws out some cool fills, snare hits, and patterns, and it makes the songs more enjoyable. His playing isn’t struggling or unpleasantly random like the last record, it’s very much improved on this record. I don’t really know what to say about the bass, as its buried underneath the guitars, but I’m just glad it’s here to support the guitars and maintain the heaviness in this record. The vocals still aren’t really that good but they’re WAYYYYY better, a bigger step up. The instrumentation and effort is obviously better in this album; a really good improvement.

Although the instrumentation has been improved, it doesn’t make the album great or anything. This instantly gets a higher rating in comparison to Butcher the Weak for being significantly better, but this album also has some flaws. The songwriting, could be better. Most of the songs are underwhelming and boring and lack brutality and energy. Only a very few of these tracks are memorable and catchy, most of the songs on this album are easily forgettable and snoozy. The guitars, although they are heavy and all, its pretty bland and sluggish too. Don’t get me wrong, this guitar is better and sounds cool, but a lot of the time it sounds pretty bland and stale. I don’t really have anything bad to say about the drums. Sometimes the snare does sound weird but that’s about it, drums are aight. The vocals. Mike is a shitty as hell vocalist, one of the worst in the genre; and he should've never been the vocalist of this band in the first place. but his performance here is tolerable and better than the abominations he was squealing out on Butcher the Weak. He’s starting to form into a better and more serious-sounding brutal death vocalist. He’s way more guttural and deep and doesn’t sound like pure crap, but he still sounds pretty amateur, sloppy and unorganized. Better job but still not fulfilling.

Also just wanted to throw out that this album is basically Butcher the Weak and Molesting the Decapitated mixed together. It has the same songwriting style and ideas like Butcher, but has the atmosphere, sound, and heaviness like Molesting. This paragraph doesn’t affect this album at all; just wanted to say because this is what I see in this.

The artwork is okay, but it’s not really all that great, the main color of the cover is gray – this album is literally the color gray in musical form, lmao. When you listen you’ll see what I’m saying. Nothing about this release has a WOW factor or anything, and it doesn’t really have much worth aside from it being better than the last album and having a better guitar sound. Unleash the Carnivore isn’t anything special really, but what we got here is a better improvement; a pathway to redemption.

This album isn’t amazing and shouldn’t be considered that, but it’s definitely better than the band’s previous installment. More work has obviously been put into this, but it was done poorly for the most part. Better songwriting would’ve made this album really good, that’s for sure. I would never recommend this album to anybody as I hardly listen to this and its not that good of an album in general, but if you wanna hear some better Devourment and cleanse your ears from the atrocities of Butcher the Weak, here’s your album. Pretty much the only time you’ll be listening to this album is if either

1. You've listened to too much of Devourment's other stuff, so you're just listening to this for fun.

2. You're just trying this album out to see if you'll like it.

Not a terrible album, but easily a throwaway and forgettable, its only good for being better than the previous album.


Main pros of this album:
*Significantly better than Butcher the Weak; an improvement.
*Heavy sound/atmosphere
*First 20 seconds of Unleash the Carnivores
*All of Fed to the Pigs
*1:47-2:15 on Incitement to Mass Murder (mainly the drums, but this section of the song is amazing)
*Better/more organized drumming
*The cool occasional drum fills and snare rolls/hits/etc Eric throws in there
*First 28 seconds of Over Her Dead Body

I cannot see why there's so man bad reviews for this album. Maybe it's the vocals because the music is simply sick! It's a well worth listening to for 35 minutes. The guitar riffs are what've stuck to me the most. And the brutality of this record. People have to understand that bands change or evolve. Sometimes it's for the better or for the worse. To me, this is the only Devourment I'll listen to, for now at least. They've got enough brutality in this release than any one that I've heard of lately including Dying Fetus. They're not super fast when it comes to songwriting, though there are some moments when there are blast beats.

I think the vocals are the downfall of this album, they're too burly. But that's the way they wanted it and it meshes with with the tunes. Just don't try to decipher what is being said, you're better off sticking to the music. A lot of it is slow and just downright heavy! When I first listened to this, I hated it! I thought "there's no way I can get into this." I was mistaken. I'm now hooked on it. It's everything, the music, vocals, drums, and duration for each song. They average an approximate 4 minute songs in length. The production quality is solid, too. I like this band. There's not too many brutal death metal albums that I own or have downloaded.

Things to look for in this album are the dynamics of what's going on here. This band thrives on slow heavy riffs and a lot of palm muting (for you guitarists). Yes, the songs are pretty slow, but it's appropriate. They're not a technical death metal band. They fall under a different category. A lot of bands don't like categories, like Chuck from Death. I'm not sure if this band likes categories either metal is metal, right? I don't see it that way. I think it's appropriate to categorize bands because we can look at the genre for example "black metal" and say that "I'm not listening to that depressing shit!" Devourment I don't think cares about all of that. They've just pulled through a vigorous release.

I don't care if I rate this a "B", I thought it was good the more I listened to it. Everything seemed to fit together. The music, vocals, drums and production. One thing they're lack are guitar solos, there aren't really much if any of those. But what to look for on here are the heavy and brutal music they have to offer. I don't really have much criticism to say here. They rock in my opinion. Nothing on here is average or boring. I think if you're looking to hear some brutal stuff, 'Unleash the Carnivore' is where it's at! I would urge you to get a physical copy so that you can play it any time on your boom box. You need to hear this!

Devourment's third album "Unleash The Carnivore" seems to be the forgotten album out of their short but sweet discography. From reading other reviews on this site it is clear that many were disappointed with this album. Some blame the production, some blame the song writing and some just plain do not like brutal death metal. However I disagree with the hate this album has had thrown at it.

"Unleash The Carnivore" is unrelenting monolithic slab of death metal, offering possibly one of the most powerful production sounds within the genre. The drums have a nice clear tone with no part of the kit disappearing under the strain of the other instruments, Mike's vocals are well balanced within the mix, not being too loud or too quiet. Ruben's guitar tone is incredible here, an incredibly thick sound that still allows the listener to distinguish between the notes being played. The only negative of the production is Chris's bass being somewhat buried into the mix, when it does rear its ugly head (in "Fed to the pigs" or "Field Of The Impaled" for example) you can hear it has a dirty distorted tone. This distorted approach to the bass can explain why it is mostly buried into the mix it because merges with Ruben's down tuned and distorted guitar tone. However I do believe you would notice the absence of Chris's playing here.

Onto the music within, this album wastes no time in crushing your skull. From the get-go we are assaulted with Devourment's signature approach to brutal death metal, slow chugging slams, groove laden mid-tempo sections and insanely fast blasting sections. There are standout tracks like "Fed To The Pigs", "Crucify The Impure" "Deflesh The Abducted" and "Unleash The Carnivore". "Fed To The Pigs" has become a fan favourite and you can see why, this song reeks of groove and packs some incredible slams into the mix. Take the intro for example, after a strange drum orientated build up section, everything drops out whilst Mike joins in, unleashing an incredible growl that leads into one of the catchiest moments in brutal death metal history. The other standout tracks follow more or less the same criteria, offering the most memorable material on the cd. There is a reason I will not elaborate in detail about the other tracks that I will discuss later (when I look at the downsides of this cd).

The performances on this album are strong. To start with Eric's drumming, as always he does not disappoint, he combines more traditional brutal death metal blasting with interesting use of the toms and cymbals (see "Fed To the Pigs" or "Over Her Dead Body"). One thing that impressed me in particular was his use of the ride cymbal, Eric often enhances certain beats with an interesting pattern on the ride. This keeps the slams more interesting to listen too (many slam bands often end up using the same drum pattern over and over again on their slams). Another thing impressive about Eric is the sheer speed of his gravity blasting.

Ruben's performance on the strings is solid. Devourment could be seen as a band that focus on rhythm rather than insanely technical or memorable riffs. Whilst this may not be true for some of their earlier works ( My god some of the riffs on "molesting the decapitated" get stuck in your head for weeks..) this album seems to be focused on rhythm over the actual content of the music. Having saying this there are still memorable guitar sections within these tracks, but I believe its intention is to make your head move, not make you look at each riff in depth etc.

As I mentioned before, Chris's bass playing is more or less buried underneath the hugely heavy production sound, so it is hard to analyse his bass playing. However when his bass does appear in the mix you can see he is a very capable bass player. Even if his bass never appeared on its own you would know he is a solid player as he manages to follow Ruben's guitar playing.

Mike's vocal performance has been a subject of criticism when it comes to this release, however I believe his vocals fit the album very well, performing his trademark guttural belch that is almost completely indecipherable. This leads me onto the first criticism of the album, which is that there is little variation in Mike's vocal patterns (some major exceptions to this however), this causes some tracks to sound similar or to drag on slightly. To further explain, any Devourment fan can remember the epic "COP-RO-PHA-GIA" chant in "Post-Mortal Coprophagia" or the "Scream for me, cry for me, bleed for me, die for me" line before one of the greatest slams ever in "Masturbating At The Slab". And on "Unleash The Carnivore" there are not really any sections like this to get embedded into your head. The closest vocal section to these previously mentioned moments is where the vocals join in "Fed To The Pigs", which to be honest one of the reasons I decided to hunt this album down, purely for the pleasure of walking around with this track destroying my ears.

Other than the previous criticism, there is one other flaw with this cd. This flaw applies to nearly EVERY brutal death metal band ever, the fact that songs get repetitive. Many similar band within the genre (be it, Cephalotripsy, Vulvectomy, Epicardiectomy, Guttural Secrete, the list goes on) suffer from this problem, but still release some amazing material, so I do not see repetition as a massive flaw within this genre as the aim of band's like Devourment is too crush you senseless, not necessarily make you think about the aesthetic quality of every note played on the guitars.

Overall the title "Unleash The Carnivore" could not suit this album better, this whole cd sounds like a huge monster pulsating across the earth killing everything and anything that gets in its way. That analogy may make anyone reading this cringe but place this into your Cd player (or illegally download it rather than experiencing the difficulty of finding this cd) and you will soon understand my silly analogy.

Support death metal, buy the albums.

This review is dedicated to my grandmother, that passed away a few hours before I decided to re-listen to this cd and write this review. For just over half an hour "Unleash The Carnivore" ( in a strange way) distracted me from my loss, as it is almost impossible to think your own thoughts when a band like Devourment is pummelling your senses.

This is skullcrushing album, no two-ways about it. Everything, every aspect of this album seems to be pushing for one thing: To bludgeon, pound and thoroughly decimate everything in its path. Technicality? Fuck technicality, this is Devourment, and they’re here to crush the the listener with unrelenting, ultra-heavy (Yet simplistic) riffs, stupidly low guttural vocals and thunderous blast-beats.

And slams, lots of slams. The slam riffs in this album are outrageously heavy, catchy and some of them are even, well, bouncy. They’re all more or less variations on the same chuggy type of ‘jun jun jun” type sound, but fortunately there’s just enough variation in the slams from song to song to keep them from totally blending into one another. Unfortunately though, they do become somewhat forgettable, because they get lost in this albums main flaw, which is:

The songwriting. Now, on this album Devourment have a formula, one that they use on every song . It goes something like “chuggy, groovy mid-speed riffing with following vocals and drums” “blast-beat section with with speedy, grindy guitar parts following” and then the slow, super chuggy slam riffs with rhythmic vocals and slower, fill-happy drumming to accentuate the thunderous grooves. Now this is not a bad formula, and works well to unleash relentless brutality on the listener, which is obviously the purpose of this album. The problem is that every song is essentially a variation on this formula, and so, to my ears, listening to this album the whole way through turns it into one, long song, so that by the time I’ve finished the playthrough, I can’t remember a single individual song. Just various parts of certain slam sections that were catchy enough to stick in my head. And even after repeated listens I still can’t shake the feeling that each song is more or less a variation on the last, which means that for me, there are actually no standout songs . I can play a random track with perfect confidence that what comes on won’t disappoint me, or I can play the whole thing and not feel the need to skip a single track. Either way I basically get the same experience .

To weigh in a bit more on the album’s pros, I should point out that the production on this release is fantastic. No murky sound on this one, everything is polished and lush. The instruments don’t have very much space to each other, but the whole thing is very tight. The guitar sound is really thick and heavy, drums sound quite good, and the bass, unsurprisingly, is very difficult to make out for the majority of the albums runtime.

A few words should also be thrown out to the drummer, who gives a really beastly performance, great double-bass work, extremely fast blastbeats and loads of cool fills. Just great to listen to.

Now I’d like to give a brief rundown of the vocals, now for some people Mike Majewski is a shit-tier vocalist, usually the people with this opinion are the same ones who say that Devourment should never have reformed, or at least not without Ruben Rosas (The original vocalist) on vocal duties. Ridiculous, I say. If you haven’t heard Devourment before, I’ll quickly explain the difference between the two: Rubens vocals were extremely low, ultra guttural vocals of a hilarious burpy-farty nature, and in the context of "Molesting the Decapitated", were the perfect thing for that release. Mike’s vocals on the other hand are a much more monotone, slightly higher pitched gurgle-grunt-roar, and in my opinion, they go along much better with the bands newer, post-reformation sound, which is much cleaner in nature than the debut. And on this album, thanks to the fine mix, the vocals, despite their lowness don’t get lost in the mix, but rather sit just above the guitars, a perfect perch to assist them with the relentless pounding of the listener .

In summary, this album is all about the brutality, and not much else. Not really surprising I suppose, but it would have been cool if the band had written a few songs that stood out a little from the endless chug-blast to be found here. But that’s not really the point of this kind of music is it? My understanding is that albums like this one always translate better to a live environment, where the fans can happily mosh away to the mindless brutality. But for home use? I’d say it’s great as a workout album, or background music for other physically involving tasks, where you can just nod your head along while you work, but aside from that, the only time I’ll really be putting this one on is when I’m just in the mood for something that’s un-emotionally involving and brutal.

7\10 rating because it’s really good at what it does, just don’t be looking for anything groundbreaking or “deep”. Basically for slam fans and few others.

May also be useful as rage music, or scaring/pissing off your neighbors.

I'll admit that Devourment's 1999 debut "Molesting the Decapitated" was pretty good, but following it was disappointing and Deeds of Flesh-esque (in other words, boring) album "Butcher the Weak", and was basically the beginning of the end for these guys. Now we have what is basically equivalent to a band like Emmure. Yes, I actually said it. The purpose and of this music has been raped by the simple need to play a few fucking power chords at 2 tempos and in slightly varied patterns. While there was true fire in the band's earlier work, there is none here. Just the ashes.

This album is just a few slams and a few faster, grindier parts here and there. Maybe an intro to a song or two. That's it. You know the whole album now. Shitty production, Mike Majewski's trademark inhales, inaudible bass, and chugging make up the sound of this album. Now you know the makeup and sound. No need to go any further really.

Mike Majewski is the biggest disappointment here. While his vocals on "Butcher the Weak" were no better, they were at least varied there, with the ocassional Frank Mullen-wannabe growl popping up. Not here though, this has even less death metal growls than "Molesting the Decapitated" had! Mike tries absolutly nothing on this album but what he has already done before. If only Ruben was still the singer! Oh wait, Ruben (guitar) does some vocals on this album too!!! Yippee! Don't get excited, his vocals are equally as shitty as Mike's, and how anyone can tell the difference between Ruben and Mike is beyond me. There is also a 3rd singer on this album, the bassist of the band, "Captain Piss". His vocals are death growls (always a plus in my book), and are fairly decent. Once again, however, do not get excited, as he only sings one word repeated 4 times in the song "Incitement to Mass Murder" (stupid name for a song).

So if you're a devoted Devourment fan you'll probably find this satisfying. I like the band, but I just don't understand this. I should have made this a more musically oriented review but in honesty I don't want to have to listen closely enough to tell you everything I could. I'll leave that to the next reviewer.


0/10

3 years after the release of Devourment's 2nd issue of "Butcher The Weak", a new killer emerges from a decaying wasteland that is depicted in the cover art of Devourment's 4th full-length album titled Unleash The Carnivore.

The production is fucking heavy as fuck and the musicianship is great, but it's too predictable. None of the songs really stand out from the rest except for "Deflesh The Abducted", "Incitement To Murder", and "Over Her Dead Body" which had an awesome grindcore-inspired onslaught in the intro. By the way, where are those Suffocation/Chest growls that can be heard in Butcher The Weak? Those were one of the things I was looking forward to hearing in this album but I didn't hear shit.

Ruben Rosas's vocals were alright, but overall the vocals were too low to really be able to distinguish who is singing. Range of vocals is also what is lacking in the vocal department and I was thinking there might have been some high-pitched screams that could be heard in Devourment's cover of "Pick Axe Murders" from the US of Goregrind split.

The sample used in Abomination Unseen is fucking creepy, but I honestly think it didn't fit well with the song and would have been better if it were used for Unleash The Carnivore since it would provide a better surprise attack onto the listener with its chaotic frenzy where everyone goes apeshit in the beginning of the song.

Overall, I have to say it's a pretty good album but there's going be a lot of mixed feelings by other fans as a lot of had different expectations for the album. The sound production is clear which adds alot to the intensity during the album's most chaotic parts of the songs. It's definitely worth listening to if you're fan of Devourment or just someone looking for something really brutal.

To start, I am and have been a massive Devourment fan for years. I've followed the band through each release shortly after Molesting the Decapitated.

With that said, this album shocked me....and not in such a great way. I have come to expect some of the most brutal, the most groovy, and all around head smashing riffs from Devourment. I found the groove aspect lacking here. I appreciate progression within a band, I actually expect it from renowned bands such as Devourment. The progression found in this album is almost a step back, in the opposite direction.

Don't get me wrong, this album is quite possibly one of the heaviest sounding albums I've heard in a long time. The tone on the guitars has never sounded so gnarly, the mastering is top notch for the most part, and the drum work..........ohhh the drum work. Eric stepped it up a few levels for this album. More creative, much more precise, and much more well-rounded (drum-wise). They also re-recorded Deflesh The Abducted, and it sounds great!

I guess I had expected the unrelenting groove that 'Fed to the Pigs' and 'Unleash the Carnivores' had offered on the early release of those songs.

Overall, I wound recommend everyone give it a whirl. It may not cater to the expecting Devourment fan, but I guarantee most everyone will enjoy at least a few tracks from UNLEASH THE CARNIVORE.