Author: Primož Novak
Artist: Benighted
Label: Season Of Mist
Release: year_month
Runtime: 37:40
Rating: 3.5/5
France’s Benighted are just one more example of how the French have become a major force on the extreme metal scene. They’ve given us Gojira, Gorod, Scarve and a handful of lesser-known acts that roam deeper in the underground. Benighted are no newcomers. With their death/grind metal style, they’ve made it clear that bands like Aborted, Misery Index and Dying Fetus have some pretty solid competition.
Carnivore Sublime, which comes with 11 tracks in its standard version, is a sort of logical follow-up to the well-received predecessor, the record on which the band hit the peak of their creativity. Over 37 minutes, Benighted show this time around that they have no intention of calming down. The recipe has stayed the same. The band remains brutal, chaotic and above all intense.
The album’s opening promises a lot with tracks like Noise, Experience Your Flesh and Slaughter/Suicide, but later on the songs just don’t get a chance to shine. It all sounds too samey. Credit where it’s due for the sheer speed, where the madman behind the kit, Kevin Foley, really stands out. Every now and then the band serves up a groovier passage or a technical riff, but mostly it’s all about fast, fairly simple guitars that don’t bring anything new to the table. You can hear similar stuff from plenty of death/grind metal bands. The same goes for the vocals, which dish out the standard growl, screaming and pig-like squealing that gets annoying fast. The band shows a bit more potential on Spit, which features Niklas Kvarforth, the vocalist of Swedish black metal outfit Shining. With Niklas’s clean vocals, it’s clear the band was at least reaching for something new, maybe even a bit of experimenting. Definitely an attempt that makes this album a little more interesting.
The expanded edition adds extra tracks, such as various covers, live recordings and demo recordings. The most interesting of these are the covers of Machine Head, Rammstein and Aborted.
Carnivore Sublime doesn’t quite manage to convince after the excellent Asylum Cave. The album is merely average: it’ll scratch the itch for extreme-metal fans, but its generic feel means it can easily get lost in the pile of average releases.
Benighted will play in Slovenia again this year, at the Metaldays festival in Tolmin.
Lineup
Julien Truchan – vocals
Olivier Gabriel – guitar
Adrien Guérin – guitar
Alexis Lieu – bass
Kevin Foley – drums
Production
Kristian Kohlmannslehner
Tracklist
CD 1
01. X2Y
02. Noise
03. Experience Your Flesh
04. Slaughter / Suicide
05. Spit (feat. Niklas Kvarforth)
06. Defiled Purity
07. Jekyll
08. Collection Of Dead Portraits
09. Carnivore Sublime
10. Les Morsures De Cerbère
11. June And The Laconic Solstice (feat. Michael Kern)
CD 2 (deluxe edition)
01. Meticulous Invagination (Aborted)
02. Du Riechst So Gut (Rammstein)
03. Old (Machine Head)
04. The Twins (live)
05. Saw It All (live)
06. Forsaken (live)
07. Nemesis (live)
08. Spit (demo)
09. Collection Of Dead Portraits (demo)
