CANNIBAL CORPSE — Chaos Horrific (review)

CANNIBAL CORPSE — Chaos Horrific album cover

Album · 2023 · Death Metal

3.5/5 · 2023-10-20
UMUR

"Chaos Horrific" is the 16th full-length studio album by US, Florida based death metal act Cannibal Corpse. The album was released through Metal Blade Records in September 2023. It´s the successor to "Violence Unimagined" from April 2021. Erik Rutan has become a permanent member of the band after initially temporarily filling in for Pat O'Brien on "Violence Unimagined" (and subsequent touring), while the latter was dealing with his mental and legal issues after his December 2018 psychotic episode. O'Brien apparantly wasn´t able to return to Cannibal Corpse and was permenantly replaced by Rutan in February 2021.

The release of a new Cannibal Corpse album is always a big happening on the death metal scene. They are arguably one of the most famous, successful, and by now legendary artists on the scene. They are also one of the hardest working acts out there and they have built their reputation through hard work, an offensive gory image, and equally offensive lyrics, and off course overall quality death metal releases. Through the years they´ve deviated some from their early releases, but it wouldn´t be wrong to say that they haven´t strayed far from their original chosen path, and you know almost 100% what you´re gonna get before putting on a new Cannibal Corpse album. That creates a nice warm feeling of safeness for the listener, but unfortunately also a feeling that Cannibal Corpse are done taking chances and done challenging their audience. It´s been like this for many years and many albums now, and "Chaos Horrific" isn´t much different from the last many releases from the band.

There´s absolutely nothing wrong with the performances, which are generally on a high level for the genre. I´ve however always found George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher to be a slightly one-dimensional vocalist (although he performs both brutal growling and higher pithced screams), and his performance on this release doesn´t change my opinion. He gets the job done, but he is not what I deem an exceptional or particularly distinct sounding growler. The material is well written and relatively memorable for the genre, but again it´s nothing out of the ordinary for Cannibal Corpse, and "Chaos Horrific" is not an album which stands out in their discography. I won´t name individual songs as they are all quality death metal tracks, but maybe "Blood Blind" deserves a mention after all for it´s slow pace, heavy riffs, and dissonant harmonies...Rutan enters the songwriting team.

It´s basically more of the same semi-technical and brutal old school death metal and the sound production (which is courtesy of Rutan who has produced, engineered, and mixed the album) is also very similar to the sound production of the last album. It´s not that I expect Cannibal Corpse to make drastic changes to their core style (why would they?, they are incredibly successful), but damn I miss a little experimentation or a few more songs which stick after the album ends, or maybe a different production style...just something which could have made "Chaos Horrific" stand out. As it is it´s just another good quality death metal release from Cannibal Corpse (featuring zero surprises) and a 3.5 star (70%) rating isn´t all wrong, despite my issues with it.