Triumph of the Baroque

From the mountains of Portugal came Deity of Carnification, and my ears rang ever since. Like Vital Remains' finest work or Cryptopsy's quirkier songs, Triumph of the Baroque is just about as good as brutal death metal gets. The first three songs beat your eardrums into your skull with great technical skill and twists of tone and riffs that seem designed to injure the listener, fluctuating just enough to trick you into turning up the volume a little bit at a time until the neighbors call the cops because there is a bear fighting a robot in your apartment. The vocals are deep, so deep I would suspect pitch shifting were they the slightest bit deeper, but this is the genuine article. The guitars and drums are the finest anyone could hope for, and in the first three tracks Deity of Carnification have formed a solid release.

Then comes the title track. This is probably my favorite single death metal song. The lyrics, whatever they may be, are not even recognizable as such, the vocals form an abyssmal evil gutteral Lord Worm sort of belch that gives the listener rhythm and force but give no solace to the words that were left behind. The structure of the song is the sort of thing that would make Nile applaud, but it carries a hint of melody that goes past Nile's own work to form the auditory poetry common in Amon Amarth or old Thrash, that classical, and indeed 'baroque' edge that lurked in the depths of the previous tracks only here to step forward and bring the whole EP together.

This is sick, wild, brutal stuff. If you find it, get it fast. It is uncommon (may be easier to find in Europe) here and I count myself lucky to have heard it al all. This is among the top 20 minutes of the genre, and where detractors may criticize the production or innaudibility or unintelligablility, or even the bizzare and ancient style of melodic infusion to an intesely rhythmic work, I count these as marks or originality and quality. This is truly great brutal metal.