Register Forgot login?

© 2002-2024
Encyclopaedia Metallum

Privacy Policy

Cardiac Arrest > Haven for the Insane > Reviews
Cardiac Arrest - Haven for the Insane

Cardiac Arrest - Haven for the Insane - 80%

Orbitball, July 22nd, 2010

Chicago's Cardiac Arrest has come out with their 3rd full-length album entitled "Haven for the Insane", which is on their current label, Ibex Moon Records. The band was founded in 1997 and they released their first EP back in 2004. Their current lineup features Adam Scott on lead vocals/guitar, Tom Knizner on lead vocals/guitar, Dave Holland on bass/backing vocals, Jim Deabenderfer on drums/backing vocals and Adam Conrad on guest backing vocals.

This band's genre is vintage death metal with guitars tuned to B-flat and leads displaying Adam Scott's talented mix of arpeggios/tremolo picking/tapping. The songs are energy filled with mostly fast tempos, but also with milder parts, which are few and far between. The music displays riffs that are chunky/heavy with a huge load of distortion. There are some instances of melodic sounds, but mostly a deep blend of tremolo picked parts and chord progressions.

Tracks such as "Insanity's Grip", "Rage on...Fuck Off" and "Affliction of the Beast" are good songs to download in order to hear a bit of what this album is like. I enjoyed all of the tracks, but there were some songs that were more memorable than others. I like the heavy sounds which resemble a great deal like that of Dismember, Napalm Death and Morbid Angel influenced style of death metal.

The production is a little flat sounding, but overall it's solid. I still think that the band's debut full-length release entitled "Morgue Mutilations" has a better production sound to it. Nevertheless, "Haven for the Insane" sound wise contains a good mixture of all of the instruments, especially the main guitars. The vocals altogether are a blend of mainly burly spewed outputs with other backup high end screaming which is heard on a few songs.

Lyrical content contains themes such as horror worship, gore and zombies. However, on the insert to this album, there are no lyrics that were published. On the band's older website, there were a few songs from their debut EP that the band made the public known what their topics chose to be on. The lyrics go hand in hand with the music because it backs up their overly heavy amounts of raging death metal. There are no cover songs on this release, but the track entitled "Haunted Remnants" was re-recorded on this full-length.

Overall, "Haven for the Insane" is probably my second favorite album by the band. At present, "Morgue Mutilations" is undoubtedly a classic and "Cadaverous Presence" also is a strong output by the band. The vocals, guitars and drums were all highlights displayed here. My only complaint was the production, which was a bit flat sounding, as I previously mentioned. If you want to hear some gruesomely heavy and unrelenting death metal, this release is a must by all undying extreme music fans.

Requesting four more straightjackets - 75%

autothrall, June 8th, 2010

The Chicago region, and the Midwest by extension, has always been a breeding ground for some of the most violent and viscera soaked death and grind our nation has vomited forth. Urban tension? Land locked boredom...too far placed from the salt spray and fresh lobster dens of our oceans? Whatever the real reasons, we have Illinois to thank for the likes of Deaden, Fleshgrind, Lividity, and countless others. Assuming you hadn't prior to this point, you can add Chicago's Cardiac Arrest to this rogues gallery, formed 13 years ago, but only recently starting to churn consistent meat through the grinder. Haven for the Insane is their third full-length since 2006, and of the three, I'd say it best captures the bands carnal intent.

This is clearly a band with an old school appeal, yet their approach is neither cast in the typical Swedish mold nor the reinvigorated popularity of decrepit, cavernous atmospheric carnage that recalls a band like Incantation. This is more of a pure 90s USDM with a heavy influence from grind bands like Napalm Death or Repulsion, as well as the messier madness of a Necrophagia or an Autopsy. The guitars rave like a bloodied lunatic drowning in raw sewage with bags of concrete being dumped over his head, and Adam Scott's torn throat pummels with the certainty of an apex predator picking the bones of its latest prey. The rhythm section provides an adequate menace, the violent plodding of Holland's bass a depth charge counteracted by the natural and live appeal of Deabenderfer's drumming.

The riffs are not exactly original, and on their own, very few of them stand out as anything more than the weapons in the serial killer's hand, as he drags you into his fateful psychoses. Yet placed into the roiling, archaic blood haze the band conjures through sheer force, they are more than functional. The band mixes up the pace here to wisely avoid the monotony of many similar efforts, so you've got your full on grind blasts ala "Rage on...Fuck Off" or "Haunted Remnants", creepier old school death numbers like "Against Their Will", and slower themed horrors like the intro to "Affliction of the Beast" or the chugging wasteland of "Unearthly Pleasures". Personally I most enjoyed "Extinction Endured", which has a more epic quality to it through the thick racing, heavily distorted bass breaks and then the searing, evil speed death breaks near the climax that provide a happy medium between Scream Bloody Gore and Harmony Corruption.

The mix of the record is lush and raw, and the lyrics all deal with the classic themes of horror, murder and torment without the silliness of sadistic, misogynistic irony that dominates the younger generation of insatiable gore addicts. Cardiac Arrest have nothing to prove here, they simply offer a pure blast of death metal that will most adhere to long standing fans of the genre. Of the 12 tracks, there are probably half a dozen choice cuts and the rest I'd give or take, but from front to end it flows like a septic system of sincere human misery and this band one again reaffirms the Midwest as a Haven for the Insane, no holds barred aggression that flows through the veins of the extreme.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com