J-Man
Assessing an album like Maniacal Miscreation can be a bit of a challenge. Technically speaking, Cerebral Bore consists of fantastic musicians playing some of the most uber-technical death metal I've ever heard. And, of course, the inner nerd in me couldn't forget that Cerebral Bore is named after the most powerful weapon in the Turok video games. The problems lie in the same departments that plague many tech death releases - the vocals and the compositions. The vocals are really irritating (almost unlistenable) in my opinion, and the actual compositions seem more like endless displays of technical mastery than actual cohesive pieces of music. Plenty of people will love Cerebral Bore's super-technical brutal death metal sound, but I think the band needs to work on a few things before I'm truly impressed.
The music on Maniacal Miscreation is extremely technical and extremely brutal death metal. There are even touches of grindcore in here from time to time. Think of a band like Cannibal Corpse, but super technical and evil. Cephalic Carnage (minus the weird avant-garde and progressive sections) may also be a good comparison. Although that sounds interesting enough, the music seems extremely sterile, lifeless, and too polished for its own good. Even right after a focused listening session, I still have a tough time picking out more than a few riffs. This is just endless displays of technical skills without any real quality compositions - almost all of Maniacal Miscreation feels generic and uninspired to these ears. The vocals from Simone "Som" Pluijmers are also really problematic. Although she's more impressive and guttural than most female growlers I've heard, she uses a few techniques that I could really pass on (most notably the infamous "pig squeal" that annoys the crap out of me). Cerebral Bore would greatly benefit from a better vocalist.
As I said at the beginning of my review, Maniacal Miscreation is a difficult album to write about. From a subjective point of view, I don't like the album very much at all, but from an objective point of view, the musicianship and production really are outstanding. For such an album, I would give an average rating, but the poor vocals and generally sterile compositions drag that down to 2 stars. I doubt I'll take out this album again for a very long time, but people who love technical brutal death metal and can deal with the vocals may want to check out this debut effort from Cerebral Bore.