Misled By Certainty＜Splatter Vinyl＞

As evidenced by 2010's awe-inspiring Misled by Certainty, Edgewater, CO's self-appointed "Rocky Mountain Hydro Grinders", Cephalic Carnage, continue to set the extreme metal bar higher and higher with each album they release. Here's a band that can simply do it all: unimaginably savage grindcore? Check! Hyper-technical death metal displays? Check! Densely cerebral sociological treatises viewed through an apocalyptic sci-fi prism? Check! Cross-pollinating genres metallic and otherwise (jazz, new age, prog, you name it)? Check! Comedy? Lord Jesus, check! Cram it all together and the end results never cease to amaze and amuse; and sometimes confuse, since one can never be entirely sure as to when the "funny strange" songs ("The Incorrigible Flame," "A King and a Thief") give way to the "funny ha-ha" tunes ("Abraxas of Filth," "Raped by an Orb"), and vice-versa. The same schizophrenia (in the best sense of the word, if that's possible) also separates the ethereal departures undertaken by "Cordyceps Humanis" and "Dimensional Modulation Transmography" from the single-minded aggression embodied by "When I Arrive," "Power and Force," and others. "Warbots A.M." is honest-to-goodness Isaac Asimov in a mosh pit; "Ohrwurm" is croaked in an Esperanto mish-mash of English, German, and Portuguese; "Repangea" is a 12-minute musical super-continent, encompassing maybe half of the band's innumerable qualities (plus a saxophone); and "Aeyeucgh!" is a 30-second Dadaist belch. Excuse me. Another interesting feature of Misled by Certainty is the presence of different guest vocalists (Ross Dolan of Immolation, Sherwood Webber of Skinless, Alex Camargo of Krisiun, and many more) on most every track -- as if anything else was needed for Cephalic Carnage to distinguish themselves from the competition. Come to think of it, there is no need for that, so the band must simply be looking for distinction from their own past triumphs, and therein resides a large measure of their continuing success, no doubt. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia