I've got a steamy little nugget of truth for all of you dedicated Pitchfork readers: heavy metal is the counter-culture's answer to chain-smoking. This is absolute gospel truth. Try as we might, and directly in the face of myriad warnings telling us to stray from the ills of cigarette smoke and those fire-branding demons of metal, there are still thousands upon thousands of us sucking down butts and banging our heads like morons every single day.
With Surgeon General's warning labels, The Insider, iron lungs, and television commercials featuring skinny hipster kids on street corners trying to convince us that Philip Morris is still pulling the wool over the eyes of a few muddle-headed sheep, we've got ample incentive to avoid those delightful little cylinders of tar like the plague. But every once in a while, something comes along to rekindle the flame. Whether it's a fantastic metal album or a found carton of Chesterfields, we'll take the opportunity to heave the largest cloud of nicotine right in your faces, because we know it prays upon your puritanical self-hatred, and in plain black and white, we know you hate it.
Fortunately for those who enjoy blowing smoke in the faces of their friends and family, an ultra-carcinogen called Lucid Interval was created this past August, by gore-metal Ubermensches Cephalic Carnage. Mutating equal parts grind, fusion jazz, prog, and hardcore might seem ludicrous-- it's bombastic, loud, and impulsive-- but this is one of the most brutal, technically sophisticated, and unabashed Metal records I've heard in a very long time.
Stretching death metal to its absolute limit has always been the primary interest of Colorado's Cephalic Carnage. Previous releases Conforming to Abnormality and Exploiting Dysfunction laid the groundwork for this genesis to absurdity, combining the gory brutality of their peers in Cock and Ball Torture, the death metal comedic ethos of Cannibal Corpse, and the sweeping chaos of Exhumed. Lucid Interval finds Cephalic Carnage pushing its earlier dynamic to the fullest extreme, with mind-blowing results.
From the opening seconds of "Scolopendra Cingulata", it's painfully apparent this album is an aneurysm waiting to happen. Introducing high frequency trepanation in the vein of Whitehouse, a meticulous grind and seismic bass slowly give way to the horrifying growls of vocalists Lenzig (lead vocals) and Jawash (also on bass) during the album's second track, "Fortuitous Oddity".
Lenzig has the ability to move between the guttural growls of grindcore-- the kind of stuff that sounds like a herd of pigs slaughtering Farmer Bill and his wife-- and the high-pitched screams of noisecore, while the band follows every vocal nuance apace. With violent death metal riffs degenerating into mock blues, then back to blistering hammerbeat in a matter of seconds, Cephalic Carnage have taken a fairly conventional New York death metal aesthetic and twisted it into a sound so much more advanced and sinewy than that of their contemporaries. Drummer John (who oddly enough bears a passing resemblance to Moby) blasts through double-kick and syncopated jazz licks with mathematical precision and power, while guitarists Zak and Steve race up and down the fretboard inexhaustibly. There's nothing close to a missed note here, no indication of timidity or restraint: Lucid Interval is simply a brutal, a furious, abrasive forty-five minutes of the very best experimental grindcore.
This is an album of faux starts and stops, limitless innovation, and full-on cranial overload. "Pseudo" is their foray into avant-garde jazz territory, replete with sounds pulled right out of the Mego catalog; the humorously titled "Black Metal Sabbath" combines that genre's shrieks with the stoner drone of labelmates High on Fire. The title track features Swedish metal crescendos in the style of Marduk and Bathory, while "Arsonist Savior" utilizes gore-grind electronics-- a la Catasexual Urge Motivation-- and the power chord harmonics of Incantation. Hell, there's even a fifty second mariachi interlude called "Cannibism".
For all you metalheads and smokers out there, sit back, light up, and enjoy this masterpiece from Cephalic Carnage. Lucid Interval displays the band's full panoply of disparate styles and influences with deft originality and quality, sans any indication of softening its brutal exoskeleton. In case anyone around you starts to cough, wheeze, or gasp for breath, remember the immortal words of Bill Hicks: "non-smokers die every single day."
